Adelaide coach Brenton Sanderson vows embattled Crows won't roll over Adelaide coach Brenton Sanderson denies his team's season is over despite probably needing to win seven of their last 11 games to play in the finals. NOW it is Brenton Sanderson delivering a catchphrase promise his players have to live up to. "We will not roll over and die," the Crows coach has declared as Adelaide's grand ambitions for 2013 have been left appearing as fantasy with a 5-6 win-loss record. The Crows will gather at West Lakes today to deal with the consequences of their 77-point loss to AFL premier Sydney at AAMI Stadium on Saturday. Critically, as many as 10 players are on notice their form is unacceptable -- and some will not get a chance to offer a response against eighth-ranked Richmond at the MCG on Saturday. It is already billed as the must-win game, as the inconsistent Adelaide cannot afford to fall two games behind the break-even count before entering its mid-season break. "Our season is not over," said Sanderson before delivering another promise to his club's bewildered fans: "We will put up a much better effort on Saturday. It won't happen again. The one trademark of Sanderson's previous 34 games at West Lakes was the certainty he could garner a positive reaction from his players after a tough defeat. This is the first time in the Sanderson era that the Crows have followed a disappointing loss (by seven points at home to Fremantle) with -- to use the coach's words -- an "insipid, embarrassing and unacceptable" effort. It brings into question the hunger Sanderson said was in his players after their heartbreaking loss to Hawthorn in last year's preliminary final. And the merit of the Adelaide midfield, the Crows' game plan that uses handball so ineffectively and the players' continuing problem with tackling is all up for critical debate this week -- inside and outside the clubhouse. How the Crows - the ones Sanderson holds faith in after a testing selection meeting on Thursday - deliver an answer on their coach's promise makes Saturday's clash with the Tigers telling if Adelaide is indeed no more than a one-season wonder. "I hope it is a one-off," Sanderson said. We will see if it is a one-off when we play the Tigers next week. We will see how much (the loss to Sydney) hurts and how much we can learn this week. There is so much to learn - and fix - at West Lakes this week after a performance Sanderson summed up simply. "We got beaten in the midfield," he said. We got beaten in our forward line; we couldn't get it in there for starters and the Swans just walked it out of there. And our defenders had a really poor day too. We actually are a good side. But (against Sydney) we did not play like a good side. Adelaide's handball game is disastrous. Sanderson's playbook demands the kick-to-handball ratio be 1.6:1. In the first term on Saturday the kick-to-handball count was a lopsided 53-55 and too many of the handpasses were to flat-footed players and out of panic. Adelaide's tackling appears second-rate for the way opposition players break away - even third-rate by the standard the Swans displayed. Sanderson says he would never question his players' effort, yet many of the Adelaide fans will. "I would never say that our players didn't try because they tried their hearts out," he said. But we did not match their intensity. The effort was there . . . I've told them to keep their heads up, to cop anything that comes their way on the chin. We know in this industry if you put up a performance like that you are going to get criticised - that is part of what we do, unfortunately. But they will keep fronting up for work on Monday and look for ways to get better. And we will put up a much better effort against Richmond next week, I'm sure. There are a lot of promises to keep at West Lakes now.