Adelaide’s players have been challenged to fix a season-long sore spot and make rapid road-kill of Brisbane in Saturday night’s AFL game.

The eighth-placed Crows have won just seven opening quarters this season – only two clubs, lowly Gold Coast and Carlton, have fared worse in first terms.

“It has been an issue of ours all year,” Crows assistant coach David Teague told reporters on Friday.

“Even last week against Essendon it wasn’t at the level (required).

“And we have challenged the players … good teams don’t do that. Good teams do it from the word go against whoever they play against.

“You do have lapses in games but we need to make sure that we get our start right and it’s something we are definitely focussed on.”

The Crows dropped winger David Mackay and rested rookie defender Jake Lever, recalling Richard Douglas and Sam Shaw for the clash against the 17th-placed Lions.

Brisbane, who lost Daniel Rich (glute) to injury and summoned Josh Green as a replacement, have won just three games this season but worried Adelaide in their round 13 clash which the Crows won by 13 points.

“They pushed us for three and a half quarters, it took us until the last quarter to get over the top,” Teague said.

“Their good football is really exciting.

“When they got going against Carlton (last week), they looked like they really believed in themselves, they ran really hard.

“And if you allow them to play the style they want to play, they are going to be really tough opposition.

“We understand that if we play the way we want to play, hopefully we can snuff out any life in them in terms of football and then really put our foot down as we did to Essendon last week.”