Adelaide coach Neil Craig admits to a deviation from his ideal policy by pitting key defender Nathan Bock - in his first match since a hamstring strain - against Hawthorn's Lance Franklin.

But it is a risk Craig must take in order to adequately cover the Hawks' in-form attack while also seeking to stretch their less settled defence at the other end of AAMI Stadium on Sunday.

Bock trained strongly through a session Craig deemed "reasonably demanding" on Thursday and was named in the Crows 25-man preliminary squad for their lunchtime fixture against the Hawks.

"Providing he pulls up ok this afternoon and the next day, he'll play," Craig said afterwards.

"Sometimes we've ummed and ahhed a little bit about that (a player coming back from injury), previously I haven't picked Chris Knights after being out for a length of time, so it's a bit against our policy.

"But I just think with this particular case, he'll go into the side providing he pulls up okay.

"It's just what he does for our backline. We've got through reasonably well with Scott Stevens, he struggled a bit because of that concussion, but certainly Nathan going out of that backline gave us a different look and we just had to hold up.

"The sooner we can get Nathan back into the fold and back into some form, that's more the question, can he come back after three weeks and play a benchmark game like he's going to have to with the quality of opponents he's going to have to stand."

The Crows have also named all three of the talls - Kurt Tippett, Ivan Maric and Brad Moran - who did so well against Carlton in round nine.

Forecast fine weather and the relatively modest profile of Hawthorn's backline, presently missing the likes of Luke Hodge, Trent Croad and Stephen Gilham, should encourage the experiment to continue.

"That's been an issue of debate in our match committee meetings this week, I quite liked the look of the structure last week, it enabled us to keep Tippett at forward without having to bring him into the ruck all the time," Craig said.

"Stoppages are really important in the AFL at the moment, no moreso than against Hawthorn, so we think we can.

"I'll be comfortable either way but I think we can play the three talls, and keep the pressure on in the ruck as well as keep a genuine big guy up forward - it gives us a nice balance."

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