The Crows will go into this afternoon's clash with Richmond as named.
Kurt Tippett (concussion) and Sam Shaw (knee) were both under an injury cloud earlier in the week, but trained on Friday and have been cleared to play.
Brodie Martin will start as the substitute, while Daniel Connors will wear the green vest for the Tigers, who will also go in as named.
On Thursday Chris Knights and Brodie Smith were recalled to the team to play Richmond.
Knights, who started as the substitute against St Kilda in round 12, will play his second game of the season, while Smith returns after a fortnight in the SANFL. The pair replaces defender Matthew Jaensch and ruckman Shaun McKernan, who have both been omitted.
Key-position players Kurt Tippett (concussion) and Sam Shaw (knee) didn’t take part in Wednesday’s main session, but trained at West Lakes on Thursday morning, doing enough to impress coach Brenton Sanderson.
“Kurt and Sam trained this morning and looked fantastic, so both of those guys will be available,” Sanderson told afc.com.au.
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Knights was squeezed out of the team after playing limited game time against the Saints, and Sanderson said the forward would have another opportunity to cement his spot.
“We didn’t have a chance to get a good look at Chris in the last game he played against St Kilda because he only came on as the sub with five minutes to go in the third quarter,” he said.
“Chris came on and he was okay, but with Bernie Vince coming back in last week he got shuffled out. He went back to the SANFL and had a really good game for the Eagles.
“We’ll have a bit of a different forward line set-up on Saturday. We thought we looked a bit top heavy last week and there was a lot of talk about using Jared Petrenko as the sub (to enable us to play three talls).
“We’ll go a bit smaller this week and Chris creates a different dynamic for us up there.”
Veteran Graham Johncock will spend another week in the SANFL to build on his match fitness.
“Stiffy has just missed too much footy and training with that back injury a few weeks ago and needs to work on his match fitness a bit,” Sanderson said.
“He’s certainly a great player when he’s up and firing. He just probably needs another week in the SANFL to build on that fitness. We haven’t lost any faith in him.
“There’s still a long way to go in the season and I’m sure he’ll be back in soon.”
Only 11 players received pass marks for their performance in the Club’s 32-point loss to North Melbourne last weekend, but Sanderson said he didn’t feel it was necessary to make sweeping changes ahead of the clash with Richmond.
“From a coaching point of view, we feel that players will make amends for a disappointing game last week,” he said.
“We had a lot of guys down and who didn’t play up to their normal high standards.
“I don’t think we’ll get that same (poor) performance from too many guys two weeks in a row.”
The clash with the Tigers will be forward Jason Porplyzia’s 100th AFL game.
Have you read ‘Five things you didn’t know about Jason Porplyzia’ ?
IN: Chris Knights, Brodie Smith
OUT: Matt Jaensch, Shaun McKernan (both omitted)
The team is:
B: Sam Shaw, Ben Rutten, Michael Doughty
HB: Brent Reilly, Daniel Talia, Nathan van Berlo
C: David Mackay, Rory Sloane, Bernie Vince
HF: Jared Petrenko, Taylor Walker, Chris Knights
F: Jason Porplyzia, Kurt Tippett, Matt Wright
FOLL: Sam Jacobs, Scott Thompson, Patrick Dangerfield
INT: Ian Callinan, Brodie Martin, Richard Douglas, Brodie Smith
EMERG: Ricky Henderson, Luke Brown, Josh Jenkins
The Crows host Richmond this Saturday, 1.40pm at AAMI Stadium. Click here for tickets and match day information
