Desperate Adelaide have rushed the pivotal Chris Knights back into their AFL side to play Melbourne on Sunday despite concerns about underdone players already in the team.

Knights suffered a pre-season stress fracture in his left foot and played one game in the SANFL before his recall, joining the likes of Brett Burton, Jason Porplyzia, Bernie Vince and Scott Thompson as players coming off interrupted preparations for 2010.

Senior coach Neil Craig said there was no point second-guessing the decision to recall Knights as the Crows try to gather some kind of momentum after abject defeats in their opening two rounds.

Among all the players on the Crows' list, Knights is among the most important when at his best, offering a long-kicking forward option while tiring opposition defences with his hard tackling and boundless running.

"I watched him play a half last week for Woodville West Torrens and his form was pretty sound," said Craig.

"He's fit, he's healthy, he's fresh, he hasn't played a lot of footy obviously, but that's another one of those category players we've got.

"But in the end if we go with them we'll go with it aggressively and get judged on performance."

Craig accepted he should be held responsible if the players he has selected do not show themselves to be ready for battle - Burton and Porplyzia looked particularly ginger against Sydney in round two.

"I've always got a choice, I can elevate a rookie to play (instead)," said Craig.

"I've got choices and I make those choices and if they don't work out the coach is always responsible."

Another problem area for the Crows has emerged via the news that key forward Kurt Tippett is going to have to manage knee tendonitis this year, limiting his training load.

"Kurt's got some knee soreness, some tendonitis but there are going to quite a few guys in the AFL with that," Craig said.

"He trained fully today and the way we've tried to manage him is we're happy for him to have a bit more recovery early in the week, but he needs to be able to do a full session on Wednesday or Thursday and he does very little in our last session.

"Then we back him in to be able to perform on that sort of program."

Tippett's goal-kicking has been notably off in the first two rounds, kicking 1.5 in two games while battling to have his expected impact, but Craig denied this was knee-related.

"No. I think that'd be too easy a way out," he said.

"I think you saw uncharacteristically Jason Porplyzia last week, I would've nearly put my house on Jason kicking that goal, so we've got to keep strong with all that, because that's often what happens, and we'll just work through it."

The Crows have elevated the former Brisbane Lions midfielder Chris Schmidt from their rookie list and named him in the 25-man squad.

They have also called in young tall Shaun McKernan to replace the hamstrung James Sellar, pointedly ignoring the more senior ruckman Jon Griffin, who was dropped after a poor display against Fremantle.

Brought to you by AAP © 2024 AAP