FREMANTLE coach Ross Lyon has complete confidence in hisreturning stars Matthew Pavlich and Aaron Sandilands playing a full gameagainst St Kilda on Sunday despite the lengthy lay-offs both have endured.
Pavlich has not played since round three following surgeryon the plantaris tendon in his left foot.
Sandilands has missed the entire season after injuring hishamstring tendon during the pre-season.
But Lyon was confident both would be able to manage a fullgame on Sunday at Patersons Stadium.
The star pair has been put through a rigorous trainingload over the past month to get them up to speed.
"They've been in the equivalent of four weeks of ourheaviest pre-season load," Lyon said on Wednesday.
"So, up over 30km (running) a week for fourweeks, which would be our heaviest load.
"High-sprint, high-intensity, high-physical work.So we certainly know they're conditioned for AFL football."
The Dockers are set to return as many as five players frominjury or illness.
David Mundy has recovered from a calf problem that saw himmiss the last two matches, Michael Barlow will be fit to play following minorsurgery to his jaw last week and Lee Spurr will return after being a latewithdrawal against Geelong due to illness.
Paul Duffield will miss the next two weeks with a calfissue, which means as many as four players could be dropped from the side thatlost to Geelong by 41 points.
"There's obviously some bad news on the end ofthat for some individuals," Lyon said.
"But after our worst loss for the year, I thinkpeople expect to maybe not hold their spot.
"Those guys will have a tough week and we'll haveto work through that as a match committee."
Lyon said the return of his stars would help boost histeam's offence. The Dockers are the number one defence in the AFL but are 13th inscoring and managed just seven goals at Simonds Stadium last Saturday.
"Once we had the bye we were at 90 points average,and last year second half was 102," Lyon said.
"So we recognised we were two goals down that weneeded to find and we’re confident that’s in us, but obviously the weekenddidn't show that.
"Talk’s cheap. We need to keep improving it andat the end of the day we can improve our football program to train it so underpressure we can do it."
Lyon said his side had learned a great deal from theirloss to Geelong.
"We get a lot of learning out of it; we can't fixit all this week but we can build it in over the next eight or nine weeks so wecan handle the challenges that are thrown at us," Lyon said.
"Our aim is obviouslyto play finals but we've still got some work to do."
