Adelaide coach Neil Craig has praised his team's resilience and the lessons learnt from the two-point loss to West Coast in round two. But surprisingly, he feels the Crows are still being rated too highly.

"What I have seen in the last two weeks is a thing in sport called resilience that you must have," said a delighted Craig after the thrilling five-point win over Melbourne at Carrara

"Our capacity last week to come back in the last quarter after a short recovery period and then to come up here against Melbourne who had a huge motivation to win demonstrated again a really important component that our playing squad are developing and has been tested over the last two weeks."

Craig was pleased with his players' efforts around the contested ball - 'apart from halfway through the second quarter' - and praised Melbourne for clawing back from what appeared to be Adelaide's match-winning 38-point lead during the term.

"You would like to think that (you can hold on) when you get into a winning position but reality says 'what is a winning position?

"Is it five goals or is it six or seven goals? - Probably no if the opposition is having a real go and Melbourne were."

Adelaide's good form has continued from the NAB Cup - losing the grand final to Geelong on home soil - but Craig is keen to keep a lid on any hype building up at this early stage of the season.

"We believe we have got a lot of improvement to make yet which is good for us internally but outsiders have got an over-inflated opinion where we are at," Craig said.

Despite the confidence-boosting victory over Melbourne on unfamiliar turf, the Crows are on the road again next week when they face unpredictable Fremantle at Subiaco on Saturday night and player management will be crucial this week.

"It has been a tough four weeks and it will be tougher again next week - Fremantle at Subiaco is never, never easy," he said.

After another valuable three goals from Mark Ricciuto, the coach will not be rushed into pushing the skipper into the midfield.

"It looks good on paper and it would look good to have No.32 in the centre square but reality says he is not quite ready to do that yet," explained Craig, adding it will eventually happen.