FORMER teammates Adam Ramanauskas and Dean Solomon will do battle when Essendon plays Fremantle at Subiaco Oval tomorrow, but first the good mates have pulled together for a good cause.

Ramanauskas, a cancer survivor, helped launch the Call to Arms cancer awareness campaign in Victoria last year. Now Solomon, who headed west from Windy Hill in 2006, is helping bring the campaign to Perth.

"I saw Adam go through two bouts of his treatment for cancer and saw how it affected his wife and whole family, which was pretty sad to see," Solomon said.

"In 2006, we all got together as a team and decided that we had to do whatever we could to try to help."

Over 5000 local football clubs will wear yellow armbands for the cause, Ramanauskas said.

"We went through Victoria with it last year and over 3000 individual teams signed up, so that was half of the teams wearing yellow armbands. This year we have decided to go national.

"While we obviously can't wear the armbands [at AFL level], local clubs can now register to be involved and in return receive a pack and can choose a game to wear their yellow armbands in."

Ramanauskas, a close friend of Solomon, said niceties would be cast aside for the day.

"There will never be an issue of going a little bit softer because you are playing an ex-teammate or a friend, it's probably you are going to go that little bit harder because you don't want him to beat you," Ramanauskas said.

"(There's) a bit of banter during the week but once the ball is bounced it's a game of football and we both want to win as much as each other.

"It will be exciting to play against Solly. We used to room together with every trip we went on (when he also played for Essendon) so we probably know each other a little too well in certain senses but it's going to be fun."

Fremantle has made three changes for the match, recalling Scott Thornton, Steven Dodd and Clayton Hinkley to replace Michael Johnson (ankle), Jeff Farmer (club suspension) and Ryan Murphy (omitted).

Essendon has made just the one change, with Ricky Dyson coming in for Henry Slattery, who suffered a fractured cheekbone in last week's sickening clash with Brendan Fevola.