ADELAIDE coach Neil Craig has reiterated his club’s youth-first policy stating performance and not reputations will determine whether some celebrated veterans are offered new contracts at the end of the year.

Speaking soon after the Crows locked in players of the future David Mackay, Chris Knights, Ben Rutten, Jason Porplyzia and Nathan Bock to new deals, the coach demanded his veterans show they are worthy of continuing at the club.

Adelaide’s playing list contains six players - captain Simon Goodwin, Andrew McLeod, Tyson Edwards, Nathan Bassett, Brett Burton and Rhett Biglands – in the over-30 age bracket.

The club has maintained a policy of offering players over 30 years of age one-year deals since Craig took over from Gary Ayres in 2004, but the coach maintained even that would not be discussed until the current season was over.

"Now is not the appropriate time [to re-sign the veterans], for the players or for the club, because there is still a lot of footy to be played," Craig told afc.com.au.

"We've had some discussions about that with these guys because it's really important that, first of all, they are very clear about what their commitment is to our footy club this year and that's to play high-performance footy.

"They are aware of that and they are doing that but, as I said, there is still a lot of footy to be played. So discussions about the appropriateness of any of them continuing will happen at the end of the year.

"It's been very clearly put to our players that if you want to continue you play full-bore for the whole 12 months.

"I'm not interested in players who are just winding down their careers and are playing because they want one more year. That's very dangerous. You have to be able to perform."

Biglands, who will miss the season after undergoing a knee reconstruction, faces a fight to retain his spot given the emergence of Jonathon Griffin and Ivan Maric as the club’s first-choice rucks.

The other five veterans have had distinguished AFL careers, but all struggled to have an impact in last week’s shock loss to West Coast with Craig’s comments a timely and none-too-subtle reminder of their on-field obligations.

The coach, however, maintained his veteran group was on-board with his decision to put off all contract negotiations.

"We've had a very open, honest and candid discussion about it," he said.

"And if I went to Brett Burton, for example, now and said 'what do you think [about next year]?' I'm sure he'd say 'let's just make sure we're going to make good decisions here, let's play a bit more footy yet'.

"Our conversations will be very much two-way and I'm sure both parties will decide together what's best for the player and the club."