ADELAIDE assistant coach Dean Bailey has left the door ajar to swap Jared Petrenko with Josh Jenkins at the last moment before Saturday's preliminary final.
Petrenko dislocated his right shoulder in the final minutes of last weekend's semi-final win over Fremantle, but trained solidly during the week and passed a fitness test after training on Friday.
The 22-year old took to Twitter to broadcast his joy in being declared fit.
"Thanks for all the tweets this week! Sorry I couldn't confirm earlier but now I just can't wait to run onto the G with 21 of me best mates," he tweeted.
Assistant coach Dean Bailey confirmed that unless something "unforeseen" happened, Petrenko would play.
But with the weather expected to benefit marking players at the MCG on Saturday, Bailey admitted the possibility of Jenkins coming into the side was "still on the table".
Jenkins thrust his name into selection calculations with a brilliant eight-goal haul for Sturt in the SANFL's final match of the regular season.
"We put him (Petrenko) through a pretty vigorous test today, wrestling and tackling, so not that we needed too much convincing, but we just needed to see him do it at absolute top speed and we saw that today," Bailey said.
"It's going to be a sunny day in Melbourne tomorrow, so maybe Josh Jenkins might get an opportunity another tall forward as well.
"Those possibilities are still on the table for us before the game.
"We'll see, but I expect him (Petrenko) to play."
Adelaide is hardly rated a chance to beat the Hawks on Saturday, with the Victorian club continuing to firm as red-hot favourites.
Hawthorn has already begun warning local residents of potential road closures and Grand Final celebrations.
Bailey said the Crows weren't concerned about such plans and certainly weren't using it as motivation ahead of the match.
"We haven't mentioned it, the bookies have made it loud and clear about where they see it ... I think all that stuff's sort of off the park," he said.
"The talk out of Melbourne is they've got one hand on the premiership cup, so that's for them to worry about.
"If we win on Saturday I'm sure there will be great stories told about that, but really, once the ball is bounced it's about who can win it, who can use it and hopefully take their opportunities.
"We're focused on what we can do, how we approach the game and we can't do any more than that to be honest. "
Hawthorn will enter the game after a week's break, but Bailey hoped his players would be better for the extra game they've played.
"There's no doubt the weekend off is deserved when you win a final and it certainly does freshen you up, but it also means that even though you miss a game on the weekend, we hope to be on our toes at the start - hopefully they might be a bit rusty," he said.
Harry Thring is a reporter for AFL Media. Follow him on Twitter: @AFL_Harry.
