FREMANTLE skipper David Mundy has been ruled out of Sunday's clash with Carlton at Domain Stadium.

Mundy was a late withdrawal from the round three Western Derby after straining his calf at the last training session ahead of the match.

He missed last week's loss to North Melbourne, and Ross Lyon said Mundy will not recover in time to face Carlton.

Free-flowing Dockers paying a 'tax': Fyfe

"He won't play," Lyon said on Wednesday.

"He did it that last session (before round three), so it's that 17-to-21 day period. So he'll just miss, we think.

"We'd love to have him available but he's not." 

Ruckman Zac Clarke trained on Wednesday having recovered from the knee injury he suffered in round one. Lyon said he is a chance to come straight back in.

"He'll train and hopefully he'll be available for selection".

"It's certainly a possibility."

The Dockers have tried a number of different ruck combinations this year. Jon Griffin and Zac Clarke played together in round one before Aaron Sandilands and Alex Pearce combined in rounds two and three. Griffin and Matt Taberner were used against North Melbourne.

"I think Taberner has got some growing to do there," Lyon said.

"They were quite a tall team. At the end of the day we had no alternative to select, except for Jack Hannath, but we didn't think that was appropriate.

"We thought it was OK in the end. We sort of scored quite well out of the middle. (Todd) Goldstein was quite influential I thought with his centre bounce work early and late (but) around the ground he didn't do much. I thought it was fine."

Youngster Connor Blakely is set to be available after missing the last three weeks with a broken toe.

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Lyon has been playing fellow second-year players Lachie Weller and Ed Langdon this season, but he said Blakely would need to come back via the WAFL.

"I think that would be likely," Lyon said.

"Certainly we'll look at the team, but you don't want to set young players up to fail. AFL football is very difficult, let alone coming off three weeks without playing. I don't think that would be fair to just pick (a player) who (hasn't) played off a broken toe, who hasn't played really bar one game of AFL football. From my end it would be sort of negligent."

Nat Fyfe, Matthew Pavlich and Lachie Neale did not take part in the main part of Wednesday's session, but were out on the park for the warm-up and stationary skills work. Fyfe and Pavlich are regularly managed early in the week.

In a promising development for the Dockers, their 2013 first-round draft pick Michael Apeness trained and took a couple of impressive one-on-one grabs up forward in a full-ground drill.

The 200cm key forward has not played any football since May 2015 due to a posterior cruciate injury. But he could return to the WAFL in two weeks should he get a solid block of full training under his belt.