Adelaide is poised to punt on two pre-season absentees for their AFL season opener against Fremantle.

Key duo Jason Porplyzia and Nathan van Berlo are in the frame for selection for Sunday's Subiaco fixture despite not playing a pre-season game for the Crows.

And both will receive a simple but blunt message if chosen: perform.

"What I do know about a lot of the guys putting their hand up is that they have done things like this before," Crows utility Scott Stevens said on Tuesday.

"They know what it takes for them to get themselves right and ready to go.

"And one of the great things about our culture is that they know the expectation from their teammates is that if they are putting their hand up saying `I'm ready to play' they have got to perform.

"We have got to trust the individual on that."

Porplyzia (hip) is considered the biggest gamble, given he has not played any competitive football this season, while van Berlo (back) played a SANFL trial match last weekend - his first game since last September.

The Crows also appear certain to recall prime movers Andrew McLeod, Tyson Edwards, Scott Thompson, Berne Vince and ruckman Ivan Maric, who all missed Adelaide's final pre-season match two weeks ago.

"There's a lot of people who missed the last practice game but of those, there is not many that didn't do a large percentage of pre-season," Stevens said.

"If we make that amount of changes, most of those guys have done the full pre-season.

"Obviously the games, we would have all liked to have played together but we do a lot of game simulation drills in training, nearly all our drills are game simulation, so we have been training with them for a number of years as well as the last couple of months."

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