Ten days ago they were the competition benchmark on and off the field but the grand final humiliation has exposed cracks that require not simply PR masking tape but potentially surgical examination.

That a professional football club that held itself together with compassion and calm back during the 2015 Phil Walsh tragedy and then - despite its disappointment - send Patrick Dangerfield home with something resembling good grace would lash out at a 21-year-old in the manner it did Lever speaks to a defect of character.

And given that it has been tough to unearth anything too sinister about the talented young defender it is Adelaide's image that has been the most tarnished.

If the club has been prepared to make life so uncomfortable for a footballer wanting to return home then wouldn't parents of other teenaged draft prospect think twice about sending their sons to Westlakes? Taylor Walker was voted by his peers the best captain in the AFL but Walker should now be questioning not only his treatment of Lever but also with his wider group of on and off-field leaders just why this keeps happening.

The so-called Adelaide football bubble that threatened to consume Donna Hinkley might be an issue but Port Adelaide boasts as good a player retention record as any AFL club, better than most and has done so since the dark times of 2011 and '12.

The Crows have for some time held a reputation of brutal pre-seasons and they drive their players hard - Patrick Dangerfield always says he loved Adelaide the club but speaks in raptures about Geelong's relaxed week day culture. And Port too up until very recently held a similar tough reputation regarding pre-seasons.

Adelaide's player development team is also highly-rated. Retiring stalwart Scott Thompson said last week the club, which has previously played down the passing parade of departing players, needed to address the problem.

"I question why we keep losing quality players regularly," the 269-gamer said on 5AA. "You look at our recent history and what they have gone on to do at other teams. It has been outstanding for their own careers."

While Thompson extolled the growth of the player culture at the Crows he added: "We are losing too many quality players for unknown reasons. So the club has to have a look at a few things off the field I suppose."

Certainly the club needs to examine the way it handles certain key player negotiations. On this day last year Justin Reid announced Adelaide's big play for Bryce Gibbs which the Crows could then not deliver and previously there was the less than harmonious Josh Jenkins negotiation which cost the club far more than it had planned.

And now it is bad-mouthing Lever for being money hungry when quite clearly the club lost the player's faith thanks to its paltry first offer. In a week it has reportedly offered Steven Motlop $600,000 a season.

The Crows now say it turned on Lever last week because he broke a deal to remain silent until the trade period by granting an interview to family friend Brian Taylor. That seems a fairly juvenile reason to instruct him to stay away from the best and fairest when clearly the player was virtually certain not to attend anyway.

Was Adelaide choosing the wrong moment in trying to look tough? The Crows' sometimes combative attitude to departing players is not new. Jack Gunston was stripped of his Mark Bickley award for the Crows' best young player in 2011 with then CEO Steven Trigg saying: "It is a management decision - my decision - that as a football club we will not reward someone who walks out."

More than four years ago Walker placed himself at odds with the AFL Players Association when he told Fairfax Media: "I'm not a big fan of free agency. I think it takes a lot of loyalty out of the game ... The age they are looking at is too young."

Then over the 2015 pre-season Rory Sloane unsuccessfully pushed the AFLPA to introduce a post-retirement loyalty bonus for one-club players as a counter-balance to free agency. That was shortly before Sloane signed a new deal with the club and a season before Adelaide lost Patrick Dangerfield; who followed a longline including Gunston, Kurt Tippett and Phil Davis before Lever and Charlie Cameron this year.

Cameron did attend Friday night's best and fairest count but did not feel particularly welcome where some players were concerned, although in fairness it was a flat event. When you lose grand finals the way the Crows did that's how it is at the season's closing event.

And it's true the go-home factor and free agency have been tough on Adelaide. But at a time when the club's culture has - according to insiders -never been better and with home grown South Australian footballers not threatening to make a true impact on the national draft for at least another year the Crows need to accept good players with choices for some reason on some occasions want to leave Adelaide.

And once they recover from what happened last Saturday week they need to lift their operation to another level. And stop shooting the messenger.