Assistant coach Robert Shaw knows all too well how vicious the Adelaide media can be when your team isn't travelling well. He coached Adelaide for two seasons in the mid 1990's. After Port’s disappointing loss yesterday, the Adelaide press is likely to raise questions about their finals form. But Shaw said Port won't take any notice of the media this week, instead putting all of their energy into beating Essendon on Saturday night. ""They are a strong club and strong minded people. The media coverage won't worry them. They will just go about their business,"" Shaw said.

""They got their act together during the same week last year in similar circumstances, so I expect them to do the same this year. They are a professional and experienced team - they are really disappointed with their performance and they will get their act together and maybe make a few changes and put out the side that has been really successful over the course of the year.""

Shaw said Essendon is in the best physical shape they have been in since the 2000 finals series and the win against Fremantle has given the team the confidence to know they can win anywhere. ""For the first time since 2000 Essendon has gone into a finals series in form, injury free and settled. History tells us that regardless of where you are, if you can put those three things together, you are going to be very hard to beat. And you add the Essendon culture and the Essendon history of finals campaigns and it is a pretty good mix going in,"" Shaw said.

Essendon has close to a clean bill of health, with only Adam Ramanauskas and Joel Reynolds unavailable from their starting 22. ""We have the luxury of having three premiership players fit and sitting on the periphery in Alessio, Mercuri and Barnard and young hungry talent - Richards and Ken Hall. It is a good situation to be in,"" Shaw said. ""I can imagine we will make too many changes - obviously the tribunal will have an influence. The team has been really settled over the past eight to 10 weeks. Our biggest decision at the moment is where to play Scott Lucas. We got it right last week, so lets hope we can do it again.""

Essendon will travel to Adelaide on Friday morning and similar to last week in Perth, will stay in apartments, rather than a hotel. The coaching panel is of the belief that shared apartment accommodation is more comfortable for the players and similar to their home environment. ""We won't be staying in hotel accommodation, where your only option if you don't go out is to lay on your bed - you can't even open your window. The worst thing about interstate trips is the itinerary. I think players like to go over there and do what they want to do and then play footy,"" Shaw said.