CARLTON left Adelaide winless after going down in tight tussles with Port Adelaide and the Crows on Sunday, but coach Brett Ratten was largely unfazed by his team's indifferent start to the NAB Cup.

Ratten's men suffered a six-point loss to the Power in the first game of the triple-header at AAMI Stadium and then went down to Adelaide by nine points in the second.

Carlton was in winning positions in both games and while Ratten was happy to use the experience as a teaching tool for some of his younger players, he admitted the poor start against the Power had displeased him.

"We weren't switched on at all," Ratten said.

"It was like we were coming out for a training session and we weren't switched on at all.

"Defensively we were really poor and we should maybe have been five or six goals down, which wasn't the way that we wanted to start 2012.

"We want to make sure that our performance is to a level that we expect and there's no doubt in the first game that it wasn't, whether we played the kids or the older players."

Ratten left a host of first-choice players - including Chris Judd, Michael Jamison, Jarrad Waite and Andrew Walker - in Melbourne, which allowed the coach to evaluate some of his more inexperienced players.

"We found out that [Dylan] Buckley has got a real future, Frazer Dale showed some promise and [Josh] Bootsma probably struggled a bit in the first one but played all right in the second game," he said.

"We've really found this is a great teaching tool for the kids and we'll use it as a reference point [for them] throughout the season in their quest to play AFL football."

Ratten said several key players were in line to return next week when the Blues take on the Western Bulldogs, but Judd will not be one of them, with the coach preferring to bring back the skipper the week after against the Brisbane Lions.

While Ratten was a tad disappointed with some aspects of the triple-header, new Adelaide coach Brenton Sanderson enjoyed a perfect start to his coaching tenure at West Lakes with the Crows also defeating the Power in a thriller by just one point.

"The most impressive thing for me was that the boys found a way to win having come from behind in both matches," Sanderson said.

"That's something we've focussed on over summer is making sure we win those close games. We just found a way to win in both matches.

"There were some fantastic individual efforts, but I think it was the giving yourself to the team that made the biggest impression."

Several Crows attempted torpedo punts on the day - a risky tactic frowned upon by previous coach Neil Craig, and Sanderson said it was a deliberate ploy that was part of a new philosophy at the club.

"It was something that we thought we might be able to catch the opposition off guard with," he said.

"The defensive press is so aggressive in the modern game now so there's some opportunities to attack the last line.

"I think you'll see that a lot more [of that] in the modern game these days.

"Long kicking to a contest is back. We've done a lot of contested marking work and pressure work over the summer and it was nice to see a few of those things work out for us today."

Port Adelaide fell agonisingly short of coming away with a pair of wins and coach Matthew Primus was upbeat after the Power's final match.

"I thought a lot of the things we've been working on over the pre-season shone through for us to an extent," Primus said.
 
"Our stoppage stuff was good, I thought some of our patterns and some of the stuff we did off the ball to try and defend our inside-50s and hold the ball in our forward half was working OK.
 
"We got through unscathed and it was a good start for us."

Due to hot conditions, Sunday's matches were shortened and the interchange benches extended under the AFL's extreme heat policy, which all three coaches agreed had helped alleviate the strain on their players.
 
Toyota AFL Dream Team is the only fantasy football competition where you can follow the scores LIVE during the NAB Cup. Register your team and see how your players are shaping up before the start of the Toyota Premiership Season.

The views in this article are those of the author and not necessarily those of the clubs or the AFL.