Adelaide's week was rocked early on with star defender Nathan Bock indefinitely suspended by the club, while Fremantle's two disappointing matches have seen it and coach Mark Harvey under media scrutiny.
Craig believes the bad press evens itself out, and he is expecting a torrid opening to the contest on a hot Easter Sunday in Perth.
"Our games against Freo, whether here or in Adelaide, have always been competitive and close," he said.
"I understand they've been under pressure with the media here and we've had our own situation back home with Nathan Bock, so both clubs will go head to head about how they respond to that. I would expect it to be fierce, of high intensity and both teams to be really hard at the footy."
It is expected to be 33 degrees at first bounce and while the humidity in Perth has surprised Craig, he says weather will never be blamed for a performance.
"We were expecting the 30-odd degrees but the thing we weren’t expecting was the humidity, which you don’t usually associate with Perth," he said.
"That's what we've got, though, and it will be the same with both teams. We will be very disappointed if we said the heat got us at the end of the game, so that won't be a problem for us."
Adelaide has arrived in Perth with emergencies James Sellar, Jonathan Griffen and Robert Shirley, but Craig expects them all to remain on the sidelines.
"At our main session on Thursday Ben Rutten got a bit of soreness in his hamstring and James Sellar is cover for him. Kurt Tippett got a knock in the head during warm up and Jonathan Griffen is cover for him, and we've also brought over Rob Shirley as midfield cover," he said.
"To be safe we thought we would bring all three over, but they have all trained today and it looks like we won't have to use our emergencies at this stage."
The loss of Bock hurts Adelaide and means Craig needs to find a new opponent for Fremantle captain Matthew Pavlich though.
"He was an outstanding defender for us last year and has been in good form this year but he made a poor choice. I'm not really interested in him paying the price, but I want him to put things in place to make sure that doesn’t happen again," he said.
"If Nathan was playing he would be standing Matthew Pavlich when he was forward so that means that we need to find another player to do that. We have Scott Stevens, young Andy Otten who is a similar size to Nathan Bock, Ben Rutten has stood Matthew before and Simon Goodwin is another option."
