Neil Craig says Adelaide is 'very proactive' and wants to play attacking football against Fremantle at Subiaco Oval on Saturday night.

"I'd prefer not to stop 'em, I'd prefer to beat 'em - big difference," coach Craig said at Adelaide Airport on Friday when asked what was 'the key to stopping the Dockers at home'.

"We'll just play our own game, mindful of their style and some of their more key players, if you like.

"They're obviously starting to play some good football. They've had their squad together for a long period of time. West Coast, Fremantle … you know how tough they are to beat at Subiaco. History says that.

"So we're not going over to defend. We're going over to attack so that we can sit back and assess how our game's going as distinct from … if you've lost and you've tried to defend, you don't know where you are. We're very proactive."

But was there still a certain element of not wanting players such as Matthew Pavlich and Josh Carr to 'get away' from the Crows as they did against Port Adelaide last Sunday?

"Yeah, but they'd be thinking the same," Craig said. "They'd be thinking: 'How are we going to handle (Simon) Goodwin? How are we going to handle (Andrew) McLeod - if Goodwin and McLeod are in the middle together?' Who are they going to put on (Mark) Ricciuto? So it works both ways.

"I'm not sitting here saying we don't even look at them. Of course we do. We have a very healthy respect for those players, as I'm sure Port did. But we're not going to sit down and worry about them all day.

"We pride ourselves on having a nice balance of good defensive action but also backing ourselves in. As I said, you can go with an attitude of trying to stop people versus getting as good as you can with your game. We go that way. I'm not interested in stopping people. I'm interested in beating people."

Asked how Adelaide would beat the flooding tactics the Dockers employed successfully against Port, Craig said: "That'll be good for us. More and more sides are doing it so it's another challenge for us.

"We haven't been able to practise too much for that in the past couple of weeks because of (limited) time on the track. But it will give us another opportunity to have a look at a side, if they do play like that, to see how we handle it, and we'll get some more information out of the game on that - of areas we need to improve on.

"We've got some thoughts as a match committee on the sort of play we've got to evolve into when that happens, and, clearly, we've spent some time on it on the track but not enough to be confident we're ingrained on being able to handle it."

Craig said he had 'a healthy respect' for Pavlich, and added: "He's one of the real keys for them up forward, but we've also got some pretty good backmen we're confident can do the job.

"And it won't be just one individual, it will be what happens up the field. It will be about delivery. But at some stage, whoever's got him is going to have to play him one on one and do the best he can."

Craig said having to play Fremantle in Perth immediately after matches in Melbourne, Adelaide and the Gold Coast was 'a huge test' for the Crows.

"But that's the competition we play in," he said. "Irrespective of the result, we won't be blaming travel or programming. We all knew what the programming was a long time ago. We've all had a chance to prepare for it.

"Towards the end of the season we play six of eight games at home so you can't have it both ways. Our challenge is to perform under all conditions.

"The fact we've backed our training off the last two weeks, I've seen a real rise in energy and a sparkle return this week. I think what we've done on the track the last two weeks has been appropriate and hopefully that will spill over to be able to get us through with a performance this weekend."
Craig said the Crows had played 'some outstanding football' against Melbourne at Carrara last week.

"At one stage we were nearly seven goals ahead against a side that had a huge motivation and a pretty good squad on the park, but we nearly got beat," he said.

"So there was some good stuff, but also some footy that we didn't like at all. As I keep saying, we've got a long way to go before we become a consistently powerful side."