It is hard to believe that the Neil Craig era at Adelaide will end without a premiership.

The Crows, or the Crow-bots, as they were known when they were at their powerful and most clinical best, in 2005 and 2006, will be remembered as one of the best teams not to win a premiership.

Within a year of Neil Craig assuming the coaching position, they were winning with ease and there was a stage during 2005 when they were ridiculously short-priced favourites for the premiership. They won 10 straight games leading into the 2005 finals, but after stumbling to an eight-point loss to St Kilda at home in the first week of the finals, didn't even make it to the Grand Final after losing the preliminary final to West Coast in Perth.

The following season, they won their opening home qualifying final, at home to Fremantle, but then crashed to the Eagles at home a fortnight later. Another season of shattered dreams.

And when Buddy Franklin sunk the Crows with that last-second goal in an elimination final, Adelaide's premiership window had just about shut for good. They've teased us from time to time since, but Friday night's 30-point loss to the Western Bulldogs at Etihad Stadium demonstrated to a national TV audience, just how far the Crows are from the contending for a premiership and just how much work is ahead of Neil Craig, or whoever guides the team in the long term.

What ailed the Crows back in 2005 and has until now is their lack of true power forwards. Kurt Tippett is nearly there, but the midfield, for so long a strength of the Crows, has for years been getting the ball down to the forward line, but with minimal reward.

And now that the midfield isn't more pedestrian and a lot more one-paced, that lack of match-winning key forwards - short or tall - is even more pronounced. Talented small forward Jason Porplyzia, busted his shoulder in the first few minutes of the season and has been a huge loss.

Adelaide has won just three of 12 matches this year. And now the microscope turns to Craig. When a coach had to plead for his job on an almost weekly basis, then you know he is in trouble. And you know that he knows he's in trouble.

Of course, the complication with Craig isn't just that he's the coach, but a tenured and contracted member of staff, who if not the senior coach, will be redeployed to another job within the club if a new coach is brought in.

From the outside looking in, it would seem that former skipper Simon Goodwin was sent away to learn the ropes at Essendon for a couple of years before returning to replace Craig. From all accounts, he is making a huge impression at Windy Hill.

But the Crows are going nowhere under Craig and now have some thinking to do. Do they bring Goodwin back a year early, perhaps as senior assistant to Craig before handing him the main job? Do they stick with Craig for that bit longer? Or do they look elsewhere, perhaps at Leon Cameron, Peter Sumich or one of the other well-credentialled assistant coaches?

How would the new coach feel about having Craig still involved in the organisation? management consultants could make a fortune in consulting fees trying to wade through that sort of arrangement.

Or here's a juicy one - Mark Williams, biding his time as Kevin Sheedy's assistant at GWS, but itching to be a senior coach once more. If there is no succession plan, then wouldn't his return to Adelaide, to spearhead the Crows, really be something?