Adelaide's AFL top four ambitions will be given a first significant test in their pre-season Cup opener on Saturday night, by a Port Adelaide side intent on building a more stingy reputation.

The Crows were tipped out of the 2009 finals in agonising circumstances by Collingwood, at the end of a promising campaign in which they failed to defeat any of the top four sides, save for a narrow win over the Magpies in round one.

Preparations for the new season were setback by the loss of young utility Andy Otten to a knee reconstruction, but coach Neil Craig made no secret of his team's desire to break into the top echelon.

"The feeling of our playing group is that first of all we improve on where we were last year ... we need to keep pushing forward, and our group has the belief now that we need to be able to challenge sides that are in the top four," he said.

"We weren't able to beat Geelong the last couple of years, we haven't been able to get close to St Kilda, we've been close to Collingwood but got beaten in a final.

"We didn't beat the Western Bulldogs, so we now believe we have to challenge those sides - if we start to challenging and beating those sides, you're going to be pretty high up the ladder, so that's our next step."

Several players will be jostling for the position left by Otten, in what should otherwise be a quite settled line-up.

Craig indicated his preference for finding another youngster to deputise for Otten, with young flanker Tony Armstrong a frontrunner for the role.

"What I am keen to do if possible is to introduce some new blood in that area, because with Graham Johncock, Nathan Bock, Goodwin, Michael Doughty, Ben Rutten, it's a good area of the ground for a young player to learn his footy, with the experience around him.

"(Armstrong) could possibly play in that role, we'd just have to look at him on a slightly taller player, but he can play in defence for us."

Port Adelaide, meanwhile, are fighting to regather the respect that has been lost over successive seasons of underachievement, while the club's bean counters are desperate for on-field achievement to help stimulate greater cash flow to help alleviate Port's sizeable debts.

Power coach Mark Williams said his approach to pre-season had been to develop a more defensive-minded attitude among players who were infamous for not running both ways in 2009.

"It's about having a look at young players and seeing how they go, and we want to also discover how a lot of our plans have been working over the pre-season," he said.

"We've had much more of a defensive mindset on how we want to play, so hopefully we'll be able to hold the opposition up a little bit more."

The clubs anticipate a crowd of 15-20,000 for the fixture.

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