Adelaide captain Taylor Walker says the Crows must get tougher to survive in the business end of AFL seasons.

Walker’s Crows have been beaten semi-finalists in the past two years.

“We need to be a little bit tougher in the contest,” Walker told reporters on Monday.

“There were periods through games that we weren’t at our best so we need to maintain it for longer periods of time.

“There’s some things you need to finetune more so than others.

“So we’ll talk about that today and get on the way to getting better and trying to achieve what we want next year.”

Adelaide’s entire squad rejoined training on Monday with Walker forecasting a competitive pre-season.

“There is opportunities up for grabs and it will be interesting to see who will want to take them,” he said.

“Every single player … you come in as a first-year (player). I don’t put any limits on those guys either.

“We’ll educate every single player to play different positions.”

Walker’s forward-line colleagues Josh Jenkins and Tom Lynch are on modified programs ahead of Christmas.

But the skipper returned to training a fortnight ago, earlier than expected, as he targeted taking Adelaide to that next step next season.

“I just wanted to come back and get five weeks in before Christmas,” Walker said.

“I like to keep an eye on the young guys; see how they’re going; see what sort of puppy fat they’ve got.”