ADELAIDE ruckman Ivan Maric says there’s a “totally different” feeling among the players heading into this year’s finals series compared with the club’s failed attempts of 2007 and 2008.

The Crows have been bundled out in the first week of finals in each of the past two years, but Maric said his side was better placed to progress deeper into September this time around.

“Last year I remember, personally, that we were pretty satisfied just making the finals. We thought we had a young team and did pretty well just to make it,” Maric said on Monday.

“I’ve learned a lot from that experience and also how high the intensity was compared to a normal game. We’ve all learned a lot and it’s a totally different feeling this year.”

The Crows kicked the highest score of the season, 27.14 (176), to dismantle Carlton by 72 points at Docklands last weekend.

Adelaide chief executive Steven Trigg said his club’s preparation going into the finals was as good as it had been for “a while”.

“I thought that some of our form on the weekend was as good as we’ve produced for a long time,” Trigg said.

“Reproducing that in a finals situation with the weight of expectation upon us is going to be the challenge.”

The Crows, who lost forwards Brett Burton and Jason Porplyzia to injury in the latter part of the season, came up against an undermanned Collingwood at home in the first elimination final last year. The heavily-favoured Crows put in one of their worst performances of the season to go down by 29 points.

Maric said he was confident the Crows would walk off the ground with no regrets this year.

“We’ve got pretty high expectations and we’ve got plenty of belief in our game plan and each other," he said.

"I think we’ve executed the game plan] pretty consistently over the past month, and that’s what we’re going to do again on Friday night.”