Adelaide coach Neil Craig admits to jealousy at the pre-season progress of AFL rivals Port Adelaide.

And Craig acknowledges the Crows have an awful lot of catching up to do if they are to be ready for the season proper in three weeks' time.

Unable to beat Port or Collingwood in their opening two matches of pre-season, the Crows host Melbourne in Adelaide's outer northern suburbs on Saturday.

They are still without a number of key players, causing Craig to look enviously across to the Power who were scheduled to meet the Western Bulldogs in a pre-season cup semi at Etihad Stadium on Friday night.

"I'm jealous of Port getting that far because that's what we wanted to do," Craig said on Thursday.

"In the end they were good enough to do it and we weren't, so for us we've got to get better.

"We're arch-enemies and it remains that way. I'm jealous.

"I wish we were there (in the semi-finals)."

Few coaches are more fastidious about ticking various boxes on their way to round one of the season than Craig, so his frustration at the horrid weather that disrupted the club's match against the Magpies in Alice Springs was palpable.

"In terms of ball movement neither side would come out of that game saying, 'we saw some things that we were trying over the pre-season'.

"You saw the conditions. It was like get the footy and kick it basically," Craig said.

"In the next two weeks hopefully we'll get the weather conditions, so we can tick some boxes that we need to, but I can't help the conditions.

"Collingwood would say they got nothing out of last week. It was a dead week for those two clubs."

With nagging ailments for Nathan van Berlo, Jason Porplyzia, Chris Knights, Brad Moran, Brad Symes and James Sellar, Craig is trying to make the best of the situation.

"We're up against it, but we've got 22 minor round games to go and two (practice) games. As a very successful coach of this footy club (Malcolm Blight) once said, 'the season's a marathon (not a sprint)'," Craig said.

"I can't worry about van Berlo or Porplyzia because the reality is that they can't help us at the moment.

"I need to concentrate on Jack Gunston, Rory Sloane, Will Young, Chris Schmidt, Shaun McKernan, Ricky Henderson and Myke Cook."

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