INJURY-PRONE Richmond midfielder Dion Prestia has been added to the club's bulging casualty ward with a tight hamstring, and will miss Thursday night's game against former club Gold Coast.

The 28-year-old has a lengthy history of soft-tissue concerns and lasted just one match into his comeback from a calf injury, pulling up sore after the demoralising loss to St Kilda.

Coach Damien Hardwick confirmed David Astbury (Achilles) would return and untried tall Ben Miller will be in the squad at the very least, somewhat off-setting the loss of defensive duo Noah Balta and Nathan Broad.

The duo had surgery on respective syndesmosis injuries earlier this week, with Balta also suffering from bone bruising in his knee.

Prestia ran laps at training on Tuesday morning, Nick Vlastuin (corked quad) did touch drills with Ivan Soldo (ACL), while Tom Lynch (knee) moved well in his quest to be proven fit for the Suns.

Mabior Chol (dislocated finger) trained with the main group with protection on his hand and will also need to be passed fit in order to play.

Integral ruckman Toby Nankervis (knee) partially trained with the main group, but remains at least one week away.

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"Dion unfortunately won't play either, he's pulled up a bit tight from a hamstring injury, which we just haven't seemed to – it just keeps moving from side to side, so he's another guy who won't play this week," Hardwick said.

The Tigers looked a shell of their old selves against the Saints, kicking 2.10 and making uncharacteristic skill errors all over the park.

"We've got trust, but it's probably been more of a challenging conversation this week. Our group is a proud group, they know how to play the game, we just need to make sure we consistently drive the standards we live by," Hardwick said.

"We probably aren't at that level at the moment. We're still in the hunt, there's no doubt about that, we've just got to make sure we give ourselves every best chance to make the finals and we'll see what happens from there. 

"Stoppages for us have never been a strength of ours. We set up for a turnover game and the game is won and lost on the back of turnover, in our opinion. What's probably been hurting us is we haven't scored as much off turnover as we would have liked. 

"We're still moving the ball relatively efficiently, but the scores from turnover haven't been there. There are some things in our game we're not quite doing as well as we would have liked from the ball-movement point of view, and we'd like that to click a little bit quicker than it has."

Hardwick would not be drawn on suggestions the Tiger dynasty was over after three flags in four years, with the club currently sitting in eighth spot.

"People have told us their opinion, they're newsmakers, that's what they do. They're after big headlines. We've been in this situation before, but it does feel a little bit different with the amount of personnel going in and out," he said.

"We're not playing well, we understand that, so we've got some work to do in a lot of areas. This group has responded well before, and I'm pretty sure they'll respond again."