In a quirk of the AFL draw, Fremantle will play the Crows for the second time before they have faced Carlton, Port Adelaide, Melbourne, the Western Bulldogs, Carlton or Hawthorn.
They face the Saints next week after playing them in round four and have to wait until round 21 to square off against Hawthorn for the first time.
“That’s the system we’re in and the AFL obviously do the draw, but it does seem a little bit strange that we’re playing a side for the second time when we haven’t played other sides yet,” Harvey said from Fremantle Oval on Wednesday.
Fremantle won by 56 points when the sides met at Subiaco Oval in round one, but will be without Paul Hasleby (back), Greg Broughton (foot), Luke McPharlin (knee), Michael Johnson (club suspension) and Des Headland (knee) this time around.
Harvey noted there had also been changes at 15th-placed Adelaide, who will farewell 321-game veteran Tyson Edwards on Saturday.
“This’ll be a hard, tough game, there’s no doubt about that,” he said.
“They’ve got a lot of experience there, and they haven’t got too many younger players in their side at the moment. I think they’ve been playing well the last month.
“They’ve changed subtly what they’re doing, in fact a few things have changed. That’s what we’ve noticed form our intelligence.
“We’ve changed from a personnel point of view.”
Harvey, who said Hasleby was only likely to miss a week with a “disturbed” back, will have Michael Barlow (hamstring) and Alex Silvagni (ankle) available for selection after the first-year pair missed last Sunday’s 61-point win over North Melbourne.
However, it is unlikely the side will be able to train on AAMI Stadium in the lead-up to Saturday’s game after last week’s downpour in Adelaide left the ground’s staff scrambling to prepare an AFL-standard surface.
“We’ve been told we can’t, so we have to find a different venue to train,” Harvey said. “They’re trying to get it ready for game day.”
Harvey said the inconvenience would be no more damaging to the side’s preparation than when it travels to Melbourne, although up to six of his players are yet to play at AAMI Stadium.
On a lighter note, Harvey weighed into the cross-code debate that has raged since Israel Folau and Karmichael Hunt took up lucrative contracts with the AFL’s two new franchises.
Harvey, who supported the cross-code experiment, said 183cm and 108kg prop Fuifui Moimoi, who plays for NRL side Parramatta, was his ideal code switcher.
“If it was me, I’d be thinking about getting Fuifui Moimoi, who plays for Parramatta and is a raging bull,” the coach joked. “That’s who I’d be talking to. [He’s] a fantastic player, I love the way he plays the game.
“I’d like to get Fuifui, but we’re probably at the stage where we’re developing our own.”
