"We have had some pretty steep growth the last month, and we want to see that continue for the rest of the year," Buckley said after the match.

"One thing we haven't given up on is providing our best footy as often as we can. I thought our effort was good tonight, but we just lacked the polish and the finish in the offensive and defensive elements.

"We will go into the North game on Friday night with the full intent of starting (the game) better. We will get to Etihad both on a six-day break; their season is on the line and we're still considering our season is on the line.

"We still want to play the footy that we are capable of as often as we possibly can so we have to keep winning."

Collingwood are struggling on 7-9 and probably need to win at least five of their remaining six matches, against the Kangaroos, West Coast Eagles and Richmond at the MCG, Western Bulldogs and Gold Coast Suns at Etihad, and Hawthorn (MCG). An unlikely scenario, most would suggest, but Buckley has seen his side grow and is encouraged by the longer journey ahead.

He said it was difficult to question the effort of his players on Saturday night at Adelaide Oval. "I thought we gave the most of what we had," Buckley added. "There was a lot to like in it, other than giving that head start (5.1 to 0.3) which was too much for us to come back from.

"We gave 3.1 from our forward 50 ... just the lack of discipline with the way we knew we had to defend and we had four shots at goal outside 50 for guys outside their range. We've been handling those situations a lot better, but for whatever reason we just went away from what we have coached. When we clean that up we look a lot better.

"We are three and one since the bye, and we looked likely against a top four side tonight, and I think Adelaide's footy has stood up against all-comers.

"We will take a fair bit out of today, and there's still another six games to work out where we stand in 2016 compared with 2015. But if we maintain that effort for the next six weeks I would have said we will find improvement; we will find growth in the guys that were out there even tonight."

And without any hint of excuses, Buckley noted the loss of Alex Fasolo for the night, Jamie Elliott for the rest of the year and Dane Swan.

"If we put some class finishes in front of the ball they're our (Eddie) Betts, (Charlie) Cameron, (Richard) Douglas for us who would make a fair bit of difference to giving us some bite when we go into our front half," Buckley said.

"You can coach it, but we are still working on our connection with our mids and forwards and make sure we get that right. Adam Treloar has played a handful of games with Darcy Moore and he's going to get a feel of what that's like, and Darcy Moore is going to get a feel for what Adam Treloar does when he's coming out of midfield. That's your experience that we can't magnify; we've got to take it game-by-game."