Adelaide will head on their first away trip of the season against the National Youth League newcomers, the AIS having entered the competition after fielding a team in the Victorian Premier League in previous years.

Heading into Saturday's match after conceding yet another heart breaking last minute goal last Friday, Reds Youth Coach Joe Mullen has been impressed by the way his team has put the disappointment behind them, and focused on the job ahead of them.

"The guys were hurting after what happened last Friday. Seeing it happen again, it is hard to take, but we got back on the training track this week and the feeling and the body language has been very strong and positive," Mullen said.

Mullen said his side will continue to learn and improve from their experiences of the first two rounds, with a priority again being on the need for the players to keep their concentration right up until the final whistle.

"We definitely need to concentrate all the way through and be a little bit smarter of how much we push. Of course if we're not leading we'll need to push later on in the game but we just need to look at it and be a bit smarter, and that's something we've also talked about as a group this week," Mullen said.

"We reiterated the problems of last week and then started concentrating on other things, in particular our physical conditioning, keeping possession and our defensive work and structure right across the park. It has been a really good week and we're looking forward to an exciting game on Saturday."

The AIS are coming off the bye after narrowly going down 1-0 to last season's National Youth League champions Sydney FC in the opening round, and Mullen knows getting past the Canberra based team is going to be an extremely tough proposition.

Mullen added: "We know that the AIS have got technically probably the best 1992 born players in the country so we know it is going to be a very difficult game for us, but I think we've got a lot of good technical players in our group as well.

"The exciting thing about it is the unknown part of not having played them before, but all we really need to worry about and concentrate on is our own game and I'm sure that if we follow our own instructions then we're going to be fine."

Kick-Off at the AIS Athletics Track is 3pm AEST (2.30pm ACST).