Dal Santo (back) and Gram (groin) both came from the ground after injuring themselves in last week’s preliminary final against the Western Bulldogs but Hutchison said they would be right to play, barring any unforeseen circumstances at their last training session on Thursday afternoon.
Long-term injuries Raphael Clarke and Jesse Smith are the only Saints players unavailable for selection.
“There is no one under any fitness cloud. It’s been well-documented that Dal Santo’s okay and Gram’s okay,” Hutchison said on Thursday.
“It would only be if an accident happens, then you’d have to wait and see what happens. It’s a 40-minute training session to get through. It’s a pretty important session for them.”
Steven Baker is firmly in the mix for selection despite missing the past 11 weeks through suspension and then injury.
Even if named as emergency, Baker would be instructed to prepare for the game as if he was set to play.
“That happens on a regular basis; we do that on a week to week basis and this week would be no different,” Hutchison said.
He said there was nothing to be gained by deliberately pulling a late selection change unless it was due to an unpleasant surprise.
“I think given it is a game as big as it is with a huge outcome, you’d really want to make sure your players knew what they were doing as soon as possible,” Hutchison said.
“I know last year we had a bit of drama with Zac Dawson getting food poisoning the night before.
“That caused us a bit of angst and hopefully that’s not the case this year and we can let our players know tonight what the team is and let them relax tomorrow and enjoy the parade and let them get their minds around playing a good game of football on Saturday afternoon.”
Hutchison said the football department had made some changes to how it prepared for this week’s grand final from its build-up last year.
“We’ve done a lot of things early in the week that we were pushing out towards the latter part of the week last year,” he said.
“Hopefully we’ve learned from it, but again you’re not going to know until about half past five on Saturday night if it’s helped or not.”
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