ESSENDON is set to recall as many as seven senior players for Friday night’s NAB Cup clash with the Western Bulldogs at Telstra Dome.

The Bombers survived without a host of their big names to down the Brisbane Lions on the Gold Coast at the weekend, favouring youth across the park to provide senior experience to a host of untried players.

But coach Matthew Knights told the media before Wednesday’s training session that he was now looking to give his older players some game time with the season proper approaching rapidly.

“We’ve got a lot of senior boys who are on specific programs aimed at round one,  so there’s probably seven or eight that will come in, and probably another eight that probably won’t play from last week,” Knights said.

“[Dustin] Fletcher will be coming back in, Andrew Welsh  will be coming back in, Adam Ramanauskas will come back in, Brent Stanton, Mark McVeigh and Scott Lucas will come back in, and pending today’s session, Jobe Watson will come back in.

“We went to the community camp up at the Ballina/Gold Coast and then we’ve gone up there again, so we’ve had a little bit of travel, but we’re up fine and we’ll have another pretty strong session again today.”

Knights said while Watson was virtually ready to go, he wouldn’t be risking him unless he proved himself completely free of injury.

“[Watson] will just train for up to 80-90 minutes, and that will be a fairly significant test in itself. He trained last Wednesday, last Friday and then trained Monday very well.

“But we’re of the philosophy that unless he trained fantastically well today – and he would need to be fantastic – we’ll just leave him this week and go with him next week.”

Knights stressed the importance of having his players on designated programs to see them fit for round one, with his no-risk policy providing the framework for who would be in selection calculations over the next few weeks.

“[Adam] McPhee won’t play [on Friday night], he’s probably going to be available, but we just won’t risk him because he tightened up during the game last week,” Knights said.

“[Courtney] Johns will be out with a buttock, Scotty Gumbleton (hamstring) will be out for an extended period of time, and then [Courtenay] Dempsey, [Jay] Nash and [Heath] Hocking will also be unavailable.”

Knights said key forward Matthew Lloyd was “progressing well” and on track for the last two practice matches before the home and away season.

“It would be lovely to have him back as soon as possible,” Knights said.

“He’d love to be playing, but he’s fine in the fact that he knows he’s on track to play a couple of games before round one.”