NICK Stevens and Heath Scotland both pushed hard for a quick recall to the Carlton side with strong performances at VFL level last week, but they must further impress coach Brett Ratten at Wednesday’s main training session if they are to earn back their spots.
The experienced duo were high-profile selection casualties after the heavy loss to Essendon a fortnight ago, but in light of the Blues' come-from-behind win over Fremantle Ratten said neither was a walk-up start to play against Richmond on Saturday.
“It is hard to change [a winning line-up],” Ratten said from Visy Park on Wednesday. “We’ll go through that after training, we’ll see how everyone pulls up and make an assessment then.
"We'll just have to see how they train, but the big one is 'do you change a winning formula?' That's the other debate.
“They [Stevens and Scotland] are in the mix. They’re quality players but we just went with a different team structure [last week]. We’ll have to see how we go at the selection table.”
Further clouding the issue is the fact that the club’s VFL affiliate, the Northern Bullants, have a bye this week, which also means Andrew Walker and Robbie Warnock won’t be able to make their long-awaited returns from injury.
What isn't in doubt is the club's policy with regard to recruiting Barry Hall with Ratten issuing a firm 'no' when asked if he thought the burly forward might look good in navy blue.
In further good news, Ratten revealed Paul Bower is close to pushing for selection after progressing well in his return from a knee injury.
When quizzed on his team's finals credentials with a playing list that is getting healthier, Ratten wheeled out the old 'one week at a time' chestnut
"There's never been a truer statement because [beating] Richmond is a huge task for us," he said.
"We need the four points and we want to push forward as a group, but they're going to be very hard to beat.
"There are a lot of spots in the eight that are up for the taking and we just want to get one. We haven't played finals for a long time so that's our ambition, it has been from day dot, but we've just got to get the process from week to week right because we're up and down as a group through games.
"We need some consistency in our performance so that will be the challenge."
Ratten will continue to tinker with the training schedule ahead of the match in an effort to eliminate inconsistent performances.
"We changed a little bit on the Friday training session," Ratten said after the Blues were overrun by Fremantle in the first quarter of Sunday's match at Subiaco.
"We've been starting really well as a team then we changed it and went a bit lighter and we started poorly. Just trying to get the balance right will be the big thing.
"We need to start well. We have started well earlier in the year, but we've had patches through games where we've really dropped away so we need to look at that."
