Adelaide enter Saturday night's AFL battle with pacesetters Geelong intent on staying in the game for longer than 30 seconds.

Outlandish as it sounds, half a minute was all it took for the Cats to run roughshod over the Crows last time the two sides met, in round 14 of 2008.

From the opening bounce Joel Corey won the hard ball in the centre of AAMI Stadium, opening up an unbroken chain of six slick handpasses that ended with Paul Chapman being hit on the lead by a precision Joel Selwood kick.

To neutral observers it was startling, for the Crows it was scary, and Geelong's ability to string that sort of play together was never challenged as they skipped away to a 68-point thrashing.

With that in mind, it was little wonder that Adelaide coach Neil Craig set the scene for Saturday night's return bout by counselling his players to persevere, and urging them not to be over-awed.

"You need perseverance against Geelong because they will keep coming at you," he said on Friday.

"If you expect to be able to stop them perfectly every time, you won't because there will be a time when you think you've got them in a tackle, but the ball will slip out and they'll continue to run it.

"You've got to understand that you're playing a quality opposition who will win a lot of ball and put sensational plays together.

"The mental hardness is a key component when you play quality sides."

To aid that mental hardness, the Crows have included tagger Robert Shirley, who possesses a serviceable record when opposed to Gary Ablett.

They have also chosen All-Australian defender Nathan Bock, only a week after he was handed an "indefinite" suspension for allegedly assaulting his girlfriend at the end of an extensive drinking binge.

Bock's recall, in place of the concussed Scott Stevens, has caused plenty of robust debate in Adelaide, but Craig lauded chief executive Steven Trigg's call as "courageous".

"I think Steven has made a really courageous decision and one that is right for our football club and right for Nathan Bock," Craig said.

"I don't think he's made a political decision and I don't think he's made, necessarily, a popular decision and you'll often find that the right decisions are the hardest ones to make.

"On paper we are a better side and that's why we've selected him."

Bock has been deemed mentally and physically capable of being at his best against the Cats, having also earned his lesson from a wild night out.

The question for the Crows as a whole is whether they are capable of being at their best against the class of Geelong, having learned their lessons from 2008.

"Our challenge to our playing group and our club is to be at our best on the night," Craig said.

"If we're able to do that, win, lose or draw, we'll be able to get a really good assessment on what things we need to work with, what we're happy with and what we need to delete."

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