Adelaide defender Nathan Bassett is comfortable with the Crows' challenging coast-to-coast start to the AFL's home-and-away season - playing in Melbourne, Adelaide, the Gold Coast and now Perth on Saturday night, against Fremantle at Subiaco Oval.

"It's early in the season - if you're going to do it, you probably want to do it now," Bassett said at AAMI Stadium on Monday.

"Freo would've been flying back (to Perth from Adelaide) today, so their break isn't going to be great, either, so it'll probably be a couple of teams on an even footing.

"I don't think it matters too much whether we've flown back here from Melbourne or back here from Perth. It's a couple of hours on a plane, it's not really from here to the other end of the world, so there's nothing dramatic we need to do. It'll just be probably having a slightly lighter week with the six-day break as well.

"If you're winning the majority of your games, you generally feel a bit better. I certainly think if we'd lost yesterday we'd be feeling a little differently about it, but we didn't, so we're pretty positive about this week.

"Winning is always good value. There was a good response from the group. It was a tough game, Melbourne played quite well (at Carrara on Sunday) and, in the end, we were a bit lucky to get over the line (by five points)."

On coach Neil Craig's 'resilient' description of his Crows after the win against the Demons, Bassett said: "I think it's just a relentlessness to keep coming, so we really kept going and there were times towards the end of the second quarter and in the last quarter when they started to get on top, but we kept fighting and good sides have those qualities."

And on club innovations such as the 'ice hats', Bassett laughed and said: "I don't know if we've got anything else to come - razor blades or something like that. It's good - we keep pushing the boundaries and looking for ways to get better, so I don't mind whatever they bring in, as long as it helps us get better.

"I might need razor blades to cut (Matthew) Pavlich's Achilles heel - that'll help!

"They (the Dockers) have some pretty good marking players down there - (Luke) McPharlin, Pavlich, (Graham) Polack then (Jeff) Farmer, (Paul) Medhurst - a lot of attacking options, so it'll be a test for the defence. They do use the ball a lot more. It's something we'll have to adapt to and a lot of us are doing that now.

"We've been a little different down back, missing some key talls, and that's changed the structure a little bit. I don't think we're playing anywhere near our best footy at this stage but we're not too far away from the mark, so hopefully soon we'll settle down."

Adelaide is hopeful of being able to recall Martin Mattner (calf) and Chris Knights (shoulder) for the duel with the Dockers.


The Crows' injury list is:

Ben Hudson (knee) to be confirmed
Scott Welsh (stress fracture of a leg) 3 weeks
Jason Torney (quad) 2 weeks
Darren Pfeiffer (back) to be confirmed
Nathan Bock (back) 2 weeks
Chris Knights (shoulder) test
Martin Mattner (calf) test
Jonathon Griffin (back) 1 week
Ivan Maric (ankle) test