Adelaide forward/midfielder Matthew Bode says the Crows' late-season slip is 'basically just a consistency thing'.

"It's not too bad a form we're in, we're just not doing it for four quarters," he said after a closed training session at AAMI Stadium on Wednesday - and during which a Channel Seven helicopter had hovered overhead.

"Early on in the year we were playing a pretty good standard for four quarters, and we've certainly shown we've been able to do that in parts of games in the last two or three weeks, but we just haven't been able to sustain it."

Bode said the Crows had 'set' themselves for Sunday's showdown against Port Adelaide at AAMI Stadium.

"It's going to be on - the intensity's going to be there as per usual," he said. "We're really looking forward to the challenge and to see if we can string some quarters together.

"They (Port) are in some pretty good nick. They've got some young players coming through who are in some really good form, and there's the form of Chad Cornes and Shaun Burgoyne and Kane Cornes and those sort of guys."

And Bode said the Crows' 'belief factor' was 'really good', and he added: "We're focusing on the positives and what we've done well in the past few weeks. We played that really good quarter against the Western Bulldogs (5.7 to 2.1 in the second term) and it nearly won us the game.

"So the fact that we're basically playing one quarter of footy and still nearly taking out the games shows we've still got a lot of improvement in front of us, but we can do it still.

"After the game, we were a bit flat last week but since we've been able to look at what we did well in the game … certainly me, as a backbone (second-tier) player, and the backbone group need to lift a little bit.

"We've had a year and a half of pretty good footy, the backbone group, and over the last month we've been a bit flat, so it's a big game to regain some confidence there.

"You look at the years when Brisbane were unbeatable. I reckon they had lulls in their seasons as well when people started to write them off. So we're thankful we've still got a few weeks before the finals so we can get some confidence - more so, so we can start to put quarters together rather than a quarter.

"We're really confident we can win these last two games (with Melbourne to follow Port at AAMI Stadium on Saturday of next week). If we can play some of the footy we were playing early on in the year and be able to sustain it, then we'll be highly competitive."

Asked if he felt other teams had been running harder at the Crows over the past month, Bode said: "Yeah, they've started to, but also I think if our execution isn't the standard it was early on in the year and if we get beaten around the contests, then teams can look pretty quick and we can look pretty average in that area."

And when asked how he would go playing against his best mate, Port star Chad Cornes, Bode laughed and said: "We don't usually see each other on showdown week. We don't want to speak to each other - we don't like each other at the moment. Monday we'll have a coffee and hopefully we'll talk about how the Crows got up."