ADELAIDE will train twice at Adelaide Oval next week but that will be the club's only opportunities to test out the ground ahead of its round two clash at the venue against Port Adelaide.
A busy cricket schedule has meant neither the Crows nor Port Adelaide have yet been able to train at their new home ground.
South Australia is currently playing New South Wales at the ground in a Sheffield Shield game expected to finish on either Sunday or Monday and with the Rolling Stones' concert set for March 22 – a week before the round two game – time on the oval is precious.
Crows football manager Phil Harper said there might be room for a light run at the ground the day before the game against the Power, but that next week's sessions would be about the extent of the club’s training there.
"You want to get a home ground advantage but you're hardly going to get that from one training session. We haven't been able to train on there at all," Harper said.
"We're pretty keen to get out there, we'd like to get out there more but we understand the Rolling Stones are on there.
"We may get a chance before our first game for a really light run but Wednesday and Friday [next week] are pretty well the only chances…so those two opportunities for us are very handy."
Harper said next Wednesday's session would likely be open to the public.
While the Crows haven't been able to prepare for the new venue as they would have liked, they've made do by converting their old home ground at AAMI Stadium into a makeshift Adelaide Oval.
Harper said the wide boundaries at West Lakes had been re-drawn to mimic the city-based oval's dimensions as accurately as possible.
"You can't get the length exactly the same because Adelaide Oval is two metres longer [than AAMI Stadium] but we’ve brought the boundaries in about five metres on either side to make it about 10 metres narrower," he said.
"We've been working on that for basically a month now, so we've got AAMI Stadium with an Adelaide Oval-sized oval on it.
"That's been good for the players to get used to a narrower type of ground."
