Percentage is not a word that will pass Adelaide coach Neil Craig's lips as his side prepares to play Fremantle in what appears a tremendous AFL mismatch.

The Dockers have been shorn of the services of ruck giant Aaron Sandilands (hamstring), in addition to captain Matthew Pavlich and senior midfielder Des Headland.

They have lost their past seven matches, the most recent an 84-point drubbing by Collingwood, and are travelling to meet an opponent pushing for the league top four on the back of six consecutive wins.

Adelaide are in need of a spike in their percentage, tabulated on points for over points against, in order to make up ground on the teams above them. But Craig would not countenance a mention of the word when quizzed about it on match eve.

"I understand the importance of percentage, but we don't even talk about that as a group, because as soon as you start talking about that there's an insinuation that we'll beat Fremantle and it'll be a big margin," Craig said on Friday.

"We've all been around long enough to understand that it's such a competitive nature, and the people involved in this industry have such competitive attitudes that you're really foolhardy if you go down that path.

"We won't even talk about it, we're talking about the end product, the win, the score, internally you don't even talk about it, not because it's taboo and you mustn't, we talk about the things that will help create that."

More appropriate, according to Craig, is to push his players for a more consistent effort across four quarters, given that almost every one of those six wins have arrived despite a flat spot.

Early in the sequence it was the third quarter, before slow starts against Essendon and Sydney, and last week on the Gold Coast, Richmond ran the game out better than the Crows.

"(The third quarter) hasn't been an issue for a period of weeks," Craig said.

"We spent a fair bit of time addressing our start the last couple of weeks, it went away from the third quarter.

"But irrespective of where it is let's get a degree of consistency.

"What we're aiming for there is we don't necessarily expect to be a dominant side, just crush people for four quarters because that's not going to happen, but we need to be highly competitive in every quarter."

Adelaide lost young tall Shaun McKernan on Friday when he suffered a broken arm in a training mishap, forcing his replacement by experienced tagger Robert Shirley.

Craig resisted the strong temptation to recall Brett Burton following his outstanding SANFL return from a knee reconstruction - he called it a "gut feel" decision - but did find room for captain Simon Goodwin to play his 250th game and Brent Reilly to be recalled.

The demotion of midfielder Richard Douglas following a string of quiet matches appeared to stick in the throat of Craig, as a tough call on what he called a "really good kid".

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