CROWS coach Neil Craig is confident his team won’t take a backwards step against Geelong at a sold-out AAMI Stadium on Friday night.

Adelaide restricted the Cats to their lowest score of the season when the two sides met at AAMI Stadium last year, but the injury-ravaged Crows could not muster a good score of their own and succumbed by seven points.

Craig, following his team’s narrow loss to the Brisbane Lions two weeks ago, vowed to ‘re-inject’ the element of attack, which saw the Crows start the year with a 6-2 win/loss record.

“During the week, we looked at our debrief notes from [the game against Geelong] last year and saw that we just couldn’t attack against them or run the ball enough,” Craig said.

“Up until the Brisbane game, that [element of attack] had been progressing for us, but we took a backwards step in Brisbane.

“We need to make sure we re-inject that attack and our challenge will be, not just to do it for a quarter, but to do it for a whole game and then to back it up the next week and for the rest of the year, so it becomes part of our game.”

The Crows focused heavily on stoppage work at Tuesday night’s main training session and Craig also introduced a ‘three-second count’ for the player with the ball to promote quicker ball movement.

“The umpire gives you seven or eight seconds, but we said ‘you’ve got three seconds’ and you saw the errors that evolved from that. If you look at Geelong, they normally play to a one-second rule,” Craig said.

“I’ve seen it [the fast, attacking style] this week on the training track, but it’s the training track versus playing in front of 45,000 people.

“That’s our challenge, to be able to add that [fast, attacking style] into our game really quickly on a big stage, in front of a TV audience and also a full-house of our supporters.

“That means there will be some errors when we do it, as there normally is, which means guys have got to have a huge amount of courage to do it because we’re playing for four points as well.”

Geelong, who has lost just two of its past 33 outings, was last defeated in round nine by a fierce Collingwood side. Craig said his team had looked at several different ways to play against the reigning premiers.

“If you did a snapshot of the Geelong v Collingwood game, the thing that stood out to me was Collingwood’s ability to get to Geelong quickly,” Craig said.

“Their pressure in forcing the issue and their want and desire to put some attack against them [was impressive], so not just getting the ball off them, but once they got it to put some attack the other way.

“But if you look at North Melbourne, who also did reasonably well against Geelong, it was a slightly different method.

“That’s what happens when you sit at the top of the table, every side looks at how they are going to beat you and quite often there are two or three ways, which start to evolve.”