McDonald has not played since injuring his hamstring against Carlton in round 11 but Melbourne coach Dean Bailey said he was a strong chance to be selected.
“Junior will train today and he is unrestricted. We expect if he gets through today and he pulls up okay tomorrow he’ll be making the flight,” Bailey said.
The Demons have struggled when playing interstate in recent years, a fact of which Bailey was well aware.
“Our performance up in Darwin (against Port Adelaide) was good. The problem is we backed it up with a really poor performance in Adelaide,” he said
“That was disappointing. The last two weeks we’ve started well. We started well against St Kilda and the Bombers. We need to be focussing on that, particularly as an interstate travelling team.
"The starts are important so we get some confidence from it. There are pretty simple expectations and I’d like to think we could fulfil them from the first quarter this week.”
The Demons were impressive in their defeat of Essendon last week and Bailey hoped the team could carry the momentum from that win into the clash with Fremantle.
“We go into this game with some confidence from the weekend. The start, the effort that needs to be put in to an interstate game is still very high, regardless of where we’re playing. We need to take out the element of the ground, the travel,” Bailey said.
“We’ve got to approach it with the same intensity that we did on the weekend. Unless we can do that well, we don’t want to be chasing them. We want to get out and get in front of them.”
Sunday’s match will be the first this year between the AFL’s two most in-form ruckmen Aaron Sandilands and Mark Jamar.
Bailey said the duel would be crucial to the result of the match.
“It is going to be a significant factor in the sense of who can win that hit? Can we shark Sandilands’ hit or can we make the most of the competitive effort that Mark puts in?” he said.
“It will be a great contest. Is it pivotal? I think that at the end of the game their effectiveness from the hits will be a decisive factor.”
