Adelaide and Geelong are each chasing their second pre-season premiership at AAMI Stadium on Saturday night, and Crows coach Neil Craig says he expects the grand final to be 'a great game for the NAB Cup and the AFL'.

"I think we have two sides that will have a real go at it, and that's good for the competition, so hopefully the NAB Cup can finish on a really good note in terms of the quality of the game we put on," Craig said after the Crows had trained on Wednesday.

"Just to play in a grand final is going to be good for us for a whole range of reasons. It is a game with extra pressure. We accept and look forward to that.

"It is perfect for our final game preparation for round one (against Collingwood at Telstra Dome on Monday night, April 3). It gives our younger guys an opportunity to play in a finals-type atmosphere.

"We all understand it is not the AFL grand final, but it's a final and, going from history, it would suggest the heat will be on from both sides. It's great.

"When we sat down, we said if we could get to the grand final that would be the perfect preparation for us. The real curl in the mo' stuff would be if you could win it. But in terms of preparing for round one, for us it's perfect, and I guess Mark Thompson may say the same thing in terms of getting ready for the season proper.

"We are playing to win, make no mistake."

Craig insisted the Cats would be 'tough', despite their dismal premiership-season record against Adelaide and Port Adelaide at AAMI Stadium - three wins, 16 losses and a draw.

"Geelong has been a tough side for two or three years now, and really well coached by Mark," he said.

"They are a side that has taken some time to build. Obviously they have put in a really solid foundation in building their football club, and each year they have got better and better.

"Geelong are becoming one of the power sides of the AFL, so we understand who we are playing against. Their record is not great here, and let's not get away from that - the facts say that. But when you are a club developing like Geelong, that is a great incentive.

"We understand we have a home advantage, and we would like to think we can use that. We earned that advantage."

Geelong's only pre-season premiership was in 1961 when it beat North Melbourne by 12 points. It has since lost four pre-season grand finals - to Hawthorn (three points) in 1988, Melbourne (nine) in 1989, Carlton (57) in 1997 and St Kilda (22) in 2004.

Adelaide lost pre-season grand finals to Essendon (34) in 1994 and North Melbourne (30) in 1995 before downing Collingwood in 2003.

Asked how difficult selection would be this week, Craig said: "It's not a nice position to be in when you start telling quality people they are just not going to get the opportunity.

"But as a club we have created that, and the group of players we have at the moment are quality men, and it makes it more difficult when you have to go to a good human being and say he has been left out.

"That's part of the job. Considering the whole pre-season cup, this will be our toughest selection night.

"The young guys get a good opportunity to put another good performance on the board. None of the young guys has disappointed me, and that's putting everything together about their experience, where they have come from, the training they had to undergo and so forth.

"It would be really good for those guys to have another good individual game as well as fit in from a team perspective. That would be an advantage to them. Even if they do miss out on round one, coaches have good memories. It sits in the memory bank, for sure."

Reminded that two-thirds of the 16 AFL captains had tipped the Crows to play in September's grand final, Craig said: "It's better than last year. That's good. I appreciate their comments. Obviously they think we are better than we were last year and deserve that, but that does not kick any goals for us. If it did, I would say 'fantastic'."