Richmond coach Damien Hardwick has identified the Tigers’ struggle around stoppages as the reason why they were defeated by Adelaide at Adelaide Oval on Saturday.

“You give up 10 goals from stoppages, that’s really, really poor. It’s been consistently poor this year,” Hardwick said.

“We’ve got to get better at contest . . .

“The scores from stoppages have certainly gone up, but we should be able to defend those better, especially when we’ve got a plus one at most stages down there.”

Hardwick also lamented the team’s failure to maximise opportunities throughout the contest.

“We thought it looked like a Richmond game. We had high forward-half turnovers and the ball inside 50 for the vast majority of the night. We just couldn’t capitalise where we needed to,” Hardwick said.

“I thought we were probably not clean enough in and around goals . . .We took shots on goal that were low percentage instead of trying to find an open teammate.

“So, we’ve got a little bit of work to do in that part of the game.”