ADELAIDE'S Matthew Nicks says there's no hiding: it's the biggest game of his four-year coaching tenure.

The Crows must defeat John Longmire's Sydney at Adelaide Oval on Saturday night to remain a finals chance.

"This would be the biggest," said Nicks, whose initial three seasons returned three, seven and eight wins.

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"This is an elimination final for us so we're preparing that way.

"We have probably prepared that way for a number of weeks now, performed reasonably well the last month but didn't quite get it done last week (in the six-point loss to Brisbane).

"And this one becomes even more important.

"Up against a team in really strong form, five wins on the trot - they're back to their best which we saw last year, so no bigger challenge."

When appointed Adelaide's coach, Nicks unashamedly copied much from Sydney, where he played 175 games between 1996 and 2005.

"It's Sydney who we modelled ourselves on," he said.

"That's where the respect level comes from.

"I know the place reasonably well. And I know lots of places change but they have a culture that they should be really proud of.

"When you watch a team perform as consistently as they have over the years, they're doing a lot right.

"We're working at the moment. We're building something really special.

"We model a fair bit off of what Sydney do and we model a fair bit of some of the other teams that are performing really well."

Nicks has summoned Izak Rankine after a hamstring strain to replace first-year defender Luke Nankervis.

"(Rankine) has broken the record for high speed in a training session on Wednesday and he may have done that again today," Nicks said.

"He's eager. There was a chance last week and we didn't take that risk and I'm glad we didn't because he's ready to go."

Meanwhile, Nicks said midfielder Matt Crouch's late-season surge has him pondering a fresh contract at the Crows.

"At no point have we ever written any players off for the future," Nicks said.

"We're always looking at what the best balance is for our squad ... short-term, long-term.

"But Matty's form over the last month ... it puts us in a really good position and makes us now start to look at next year: what does next year look like if we do have the same midfield from a personnel point of view?

"But there's always challenges with all of that, what we're going to do in the draft, players that are out of contract, list spots."

Most thought Nicks had tossed Crouch on the AFL scrapheap - the 28-year-old was largely overlooked in the past two seasons and soon falls off-contract.

But after one appearance in round eight, Crouch has played the last month and dominated with 30-plus disposals in his past three games.

"There's not too many in the form he is," Nicks said.

"He's done a lot of work on areas that we've asked him to go and work on.

"And we have also improved as a group around him and there's no doubt that he now complements our group or our group complement him.

"He's got a game that's very much based around his inside and his fight and he's clean hands.

"And our guys have improved around him to make to amplify what he does so it's a positive from both respects."