Adelaide have combated the fear of facing an enigmatic Fremantle on the rebound by gearing themselves for a serious reaction to their own AFL loss last week.

Preparing for a stung Dockers line-up at AAMI Stadium on Saturday, the Crows have weathered a week of strong internal critiques of a performance against Hawthorn that seems to have become more inadequate with each passing day.

Last Sunday coach Neil Craig gave his players some credit for not losing to the Hawks by more than 44 points, but on Friday he was unrestrained in his criticism of the lack of pressure applied by his men, particularly through the middle.

"We're looking for a very strong reaction after last week - we were very poor," Craig said.

"While Hawthorn was very good, there were some aspects of our game that were sub-standard AFL, irrespective of who we were playing.

"Our tackling was really poor, really poor, just getting brushed aside, run past.

"Plus I thought our capacity to pressure the opposition from any sort of run or attack was really poor as well."

Adelaide will on Saturday blood their fourth club debutant in five weeks, as small forward Jarrhan Jacky follows Brad Symes, Kurt Tippett and David Mackay.

Jacky's fellow 2007 draftee Patrick Dangerfield has been named as an emergency and skipped school in Geelong to train with Adelaide on Friday - he remains an outside chance of slipping into the 22.

Craig said the process of handing responsibility to a younger group of players had been accelerated by injury, meaning no-one could afford to slacken off the pace.

"We're now asking that young group of players to respond very quickly in their careers, which probably in some situations wouldn't happen," Craig said.

"We haven't got much room for error with the squad that we've got at the moment.

"We need to make sure we're all up on the red line and we're playing to our maximum."

Though the Dockers have won three of the clubs' past four meetings, including both last year, Craig said there was "nothing in particular" about them that worried Adelaide.

However he noted the extreme height of Fremantle ruckman Aaron Sandilands as another strong measure of his young ruckmen Jon Griffin and Tippett.

"I don't think there's anything in particular about Fremantle that we find difficult to play against, we've beaten them before, beaten them in a final here, beaten them in Perth in the minor round," Craig said.

"(Sandilands) is a giant, he's the biggest man I've ever seen, and he'll pose a different problem for Tippett and Griffin, different to Cox, different to Lade and Brogan, so we look at that as a positive experience.

"What we've got to make sure is that he doesn't dominate."

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