Adelaide captain Simon Goodwin will have to beat a fulltime defender to repeat his seven-goal haul against West Coast in the AFL showdown against Port Adelaide on Sunday.

Eagles coach John Worsfold sent the likes of Adam Selwood and Shannon Hurn to mind Goodwin last week, but his marking abilities proved far too much for opponents with a midfield background.

The Power have flagged their intention to give Goodwin the correct level of respect merited by his goal-scoring potential, meaning low-profile backman Michael Pettigrew should get the job.

Taller than Goodwin but also possessing decent pace not available elsewhere in the backline, Pettigrew would appear a more suitable match-up than key defenders Alipate Carlile or Toby Thurstans.

Another, less likely, option is for creative utility Chad Cornes to be sacrificed in the effort to restrict Goodwin's influence.

"Adam Kingsley's got his No.1 guy, his No.2 guy and so on, but he's very confident (of finding a match-up)," Power assistant coach Matthew Primus said.

"If you look at last week, a lot of (Goodwin's) ball it wouldn't matter if he had the best defender in the world on him he would've got quite a few of those easy lead-up marks.

"If he shows his head in the midfield there'll be someone to play on him nice and tight, but if he's a forward it's more likely he has a defender.

"(Chad Cornes) could be midfield, could be back on Goodwin, could be forward."

The Power are unsure whether they will be able to field busy midfielder David Rodan, after he pulled up sore from the club's testing midweek session and did not appear at training.

Rodan picked up a knee niggle during last week's hefty loss to the Swans and will need to prove his fitness on Saturday.

"The doctors thought it was better if he had another day off today after training Wednesday, so he'll have a jog tomorrow and the docs are confident he'll play," Primus said.

"They want to give him another day because he had a pretty tough session on it Wednesday, it's up in the air but we'll make a decision late tomorrow."

Primus said Port were glad to be playing an Adelaide side that appears to have lifted some inspiration from the Power's high scoring play book of 2007, and predicted a few more goals on Sunday than has been customary.

"It's exciting, it's been high scoring the past couple of weeks, so we look forward to that, we play that kind of football and both teams will defensively be trying to do some things," he said.

"We see they've stacked up their forward line with some quality players and that's the reason why our midfield and forward line has to exert a fair amount of pressure.

"I don't think both teams want to kick 25 goals but I would expect there's going to be a few goals in it."

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