COLLINGWOOD is confident forward Jamie Elliott will be fit to face Adelaide on Saturday night despite missing the club's main session on Thursday due to illness, but captain Darcy Moore has been ruled out after failing a fitness test.

Moore had been expected to return from a calf injury for the bout with the Crows, having completed the majority of Thursday's session, but pulled up sore and has since been ruled out of contention.

Elliott also missed the main session, having battled an illness this week, but the club expects the important goalkicker to return for Friday's captain's run and feature in Saturday night's contest.

"Darcy won't play," Collingwood coach Craig McRae said on Thursday.

"Darcy needed to get through a fitness test and unfortunately pulled up a bit sore. I'm not sure exactly what that means at the moment, but he won't play. He left the track a little bit sore late.

"I haven't had an update yet, but he won't play. It's probably too early to tell [how long he misses]. He's just out for now. I'm sure if it's something more sinister, we'll report that later.

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"We planned that this was the game. He's done all of the work, he's had four of five weeks of a pre-season now. We set this up, but for some reason he's not there and we'll get to the bottom of it."

Collingwood veteran Scott Pendlebury enjoyed immense success as the team's designated '23rd man' on the bench in last Sunday night's season-opening victory over St Kilda, proving influential despite just 55 per cent game time.

The Pies will retain that same plan for Saturday night's clash with the Crows, but are yet to determine whether it will be Pendlebury sitting out large chunks of the match or whether they'll rotate through squad members across the season.

Scott Pendlebury during the Opening Round match between Collingwood and St Kilda at Melbourne Cricket Ground, on March 8, 2026. Picture: AFL Photos

"We found that formula works in terms of keeping a guy on the bench," McRae said.

"I think we'll have a similar formula this week, I'm just not sure if it'll be him. I think we'll have a scenario where one player might sit out a bit in the first quarter and then we inject him into the game, but we'll wait and see what that looks like."

As revealed by AFL.com.au earlier this week, Collingwood has now cleared around $700,000 from its salary cap across the next two seasons after a decision to pay out the remaining portion of Brodie Grundy's contract late last year.

It puts the club in a strong position to potentially attract an elite talent in free agency, within a year where the crop is led by Port Adelaide's Zak Butters, Brisbane's Zac Bailey and Gold Coast's Ben King.

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"We don't stand still," McRae said.

"I've said that every year that I've stood here. We want our fans to have this excitement that we're going to improve. What you saw in Opening Round, it'll look different in round 24. We want to keep getting better.

"We unashamedly want to improve our list. Our list management, the board and all parts of our club have got ourselves in order to be able to then explore what that looks like."