A host of Adelaide Crows players could be thrown up as AFL trade bait as the Crows attempt to overcome the fallout from the Kurt Tippett affair.

Adelaide were stripped of their picks from the opening two rounds of the upcoming national draft after being found guilty of salary cap and draft cheating relating to the contract Tippett signed in 2009.

Tippett linked up with Sydney at the end of last year, but the Crows are still feeling the pain of his departure.

Adelaide never really got going in 2013, with a raft of injuries to key players cruelling their chances of reaching the finals.

It was in stark contrast to a year earlier, when they came within a kick of reaching the grand final in Brenton Sanderson’s first year as coach.

If they get a kinder run on the injury front next year, Sanderson is confident his talent-laden list will be able to make a swift return to finals action.

Sanderson will scour the free agency market in an attempt to snare an experienced player.

But he’s also eager to add some young talent to his list via the draft; meaning the Crows will have to sacrifice some of their players through trades in order to acquire some higher picks.

“We haven’t got access to the first two rounds of the draft, so we will do the best that we can to move ourselves up,” Sanderson said.

“You have always got to look for ways to make yourself better.

“A lot of things get thrown up at trade week and ultimately not a lot of deals get done.

“But if we are going to move up in the draft, we are going to have to expose ourselves to potentially trading players out.”

Adelaide ended their season on a positive note with an 86-point trouncing of West Coast in Perth on Saturday night.

The 19.15 (129) to 5.13 (43) victory improved Adelaide’s record to 10-12, but they were denied a spot in the finals after Carlton beat Port Adelaide by a point earlier in the day.

Sanderson was disappointed to miss out on a finals berth, but said his team ultimately didn’t deserve to get there in a season that yielded just 10 wins.

“It felt like from the first day of the pre-season nothing went our way. We seemed to have bad luck around every turn,” Sanderson reflected.

“We had a lot of trauma injuries – broken legs, broken ankles, knee reconstructions, shoulder reconstructions.

“The silver lining was we exposed a lot of our kids to AFL experience, and they’ll be better for it.”