BEN McEVOY will continue to cause selection headaches for Hawthorn coach Alastair Clarkson ahead of Saturday's preliminary final against Port Adelaide, following yet another outstanding performance in the VFL.
A dominant second-half performance in Box Hill's thrilling seven-point preliminary final win over Williamstown has kept the ruckman's chances of earning a senior recall alive.
The former Saint hasn't played a senior game for the Hawks since round 21 against Fremantle, with Jonathon Ceglar and David Hale edging him out at the selection table in the past three games.
But on Sunday at North Port Oval, McEvoy was among Box Hill's best players, dominating the ruck and finishing with 20 disposals and nine marks.
The 25-year-old's follow up work around the ground was superb all day, making it hard for Clarkson to continue to ignore him.
"He played an outstanding game," Hawthorn's general manager of football operations Chris Fagan told AFL.com.au.
"All he can do, is do what he's done. Selection table decisions have to be made, even Luke Lowden today the other ruckman has kicked four goals.
"So we've got four ruckmen at the moment who are playing really good football so it's actually quite a difficult decision to make but all those guys can do is just keep performing and hope things fall their way."
That's not the only selection dilemma the dual premiership coach faces with livewire Cyril Rioli and defender Matt Suckling to press their cases at training this week.
Suckling hasn't played since injuring his knee in round 22 against Geelong, but
Fagan confirmed Suckling would be available for senior selection although he didn't rule out the defender having a run in the VFL Grand Final.
With both AFL and VFL teams still alive in their respective finals series, there are no qualification restrictions with all Hawthorn listed-players eligible to play in the VFL side.
Rioli has been sidelined with a hamstring injury since round 15, and while he stepped up his training intensity last week, he was still only running around 80-90 per cent.
Fagan said Rioli would join in full training with the team this week and would again need to step up the intensity to prove he was ready to play a final.
"He was up around 80-90 per cent last week," Fagan said.
"This week is the week we see if he can step up or not. We're just not sure.
"He'll join the main training sessions this week.
"He's a special player Cyril Rioli, we give good consideration to [playing him in a preliminary final straight up] but we've got to wait and see.
"We could even play Rioli in the VFL next week if we wanted to give him a hit-out. We can do that because both teams are playing next week so we can do what we like."
A decision on if and where Rioli plays will be made after the team's main training session on Thursday.
With Suckling likely to be available, and Rioli hopeful, that leaves Clarkson will the difficult decision of who to leave out.
Defender Taylor Duryea would be extremely unlucky to miss out after a solid performance against the Cats in the qualifying final, but also because he was dropped on the eve of last year's finals series.
While Jonathan Simpkin could be the unfortunate midfielder to come out of the side, should Rioli be given the green light to play.
Key position player Ryan Schoenmakers was granted permission to play in the U23 Young Guns curtain raiser before the VFL preliminary final, and while he didn't have a major influence on the game, he got through unscathed.
