Great mates Brenton Sanderson and Nathan Buckley will spend the evening catching up, ignoring the fact they'll be enemies in 24 hours.

Adelaide coach Sanderson and Collingwood boss Buckley will spend the eve of their Round Nine fixture together, continuing a long-time friendship.

But Sanderson says Thursday night's clash won't be mentioned.

"It's a funny one, when you coach against your best mate," Sanderson told reporters in Adelaide on Wednesday.

"Obviously, for 364 days of the year, you're best mates. And then that one day of the year, you're arch enemies.

"And we're very competitive people. Collingwood have beaten us the last two times so he is two-nil up on the scoreboard ... it would be nice to get one back on my old mate."

Sanderson and Buckley lived together in 1994 when both played at Collingwood and have been close ever since.

"That was 20 years ago ... a lot of water has gone under the bridge since then but the friendship has remained really strong," Sanderson said.

"One thing with us, we very rarely talk about football when we do spend time together, which is strange.

"We do speak to each other a lot; we do spend a lot of time together. But it's very rarely talking about the footy.

"There will be a couple of wisecracks made tomorrow night in the warm up but, once that siren goes, it will all be business."