The victor of Saturday's AFL elimination final between Adelaide and Collingwood will be the side that best grasps its fleeting opportunities to strike, according to Crows coach Neil Craig.

As befits a former Australian Olympic team attache, Craig spoke of the play-off at AAMI Stadium in terms of top level sporting contests, where the window of opportunity for advantage shrinks proportionately with the rising quality of the opposition.

Adelaide and Collingwood will both enter the fixture with numerous finals debutants, and for the Crows it will be a case of testing their youngsters against the club Craig thinks develops tyros more effectively than any other.

The Crows' strengths are, as they have been for several years, in defence, while the Magpies possess an industrious midfield and attack that combines tall and small with artful balance - a quality the Crows may lack following the loss of Jason Porplyzia.

Nonetheless, Craig said he could not afford to think in terms of shutting Collingwood down, since defensive thinking would serve only to impair his ability to see avenues for scoring.

"It's absolutely imperative you continue to try to develop your game where you can score quickly, because what happens in finals is the opportunities you get to score become less and less," Craig said on Friday.

"It's like any major sporting event when the best start playing the best, an opportunity arises and if you've got the talent and the skill and the mechanism to do it, you actually get to do it.

"It'll be an arm wrestle, someone will give, the momentum will swing and you just play the game in that fashion."

Both teams to play on Saturday will be works in progress, Collingwood's youngsters more exposed than their Crows counterparts by the absence of veterans including Anthony Rocca, Scott Burns and the wayward Alan Didak.

Craig said the Magpies' ability to present a hardened side, the only one capable of beating Geelong in a minor round game this year, reflected great credit on senior coach Mick Malthouse.

"I think it's a good exercise, it's pretty well balanced in that area, and I've admired from afar what Collingwood and Mick in particular have been able to achieve with their squad," Craig said.

"They've probably established themselves as the model for young player development and being able to coach them, so it's a great tick for them."

Adelaide's progress is reflected in the nomination of Nathan Bock, Scott Thompson and Porplyzia for the AFLPA MVP, the first time for at least a decade that none of Simon Goodwin, Tyson Edwards, Andrew McLeod or the retired Mark Ricciuto have received nods.

The next generation, fuelled particularly in midfield by Ivan Maric, Bernie Vince, David Mackay and Chris Knights, are learning to serve as cogs in Craig's multi-layered game plan, which expands and contracts depending on the opponent.

"One of our strengths is about taking away the strengths of the opposition, but also they complement the way we want to play, we'd like to think the game plan we're trying to build caters for all those things all the time," Craig said.

"Sometimes we get criticised, and rightly so, for being too defensive or sometimes our defensive part we're working on it and it goes a bit overboard, when we kick 110 points like against the Bulldogs in round one, but (there's) no defence.

"We continually try to get the balance of what I think we need to play the majority of teams in the competition so you don't need to make major changes to what you do, you've just got to get better at it."

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