Essendon could give Cale Hooker an extra day or so to prove his fitness as three big AFL selection calls loom for the Bombers.
All eyes will be on Hooker, All-Australian defender Michael Hurley and small forward Orazio Fantasia at Wednesday's main training session, ahead of Saturday's elimination final against Sydney at the SCG.
Fantasia suffered a hamstring injury in the round 20 win over Carlton, while Hurley has missed the past two games with a calf muscle injury.
Hooker sat out round 23 with what is being described as leg bone bruising.
Coach John Worsfold said Wednesday was their big test.
For now, he is confident they will prove they are ready to play.
"Hooker's probably a little bit different because his injury is a bit different," he said.
"So exactly what he'll do tomorrow, I will be guided by the high performance staff.
"He may be later in the week; the other two, because they're more the soft tissue injuries, they need to tick off, whereas Hooker is more a stress thing."
Worsfold would not go into what specifically is wrong with Hooker.
"I'm not the one who needs to know exactly what he has, that's the docs," he said.
"So they've obviously been monitoring him.
"The plan was that he was off his legs last week and he would start to build up this week."
Worsfold said if the game was played last weekend, only Hurley would have been a chance for selection.
Essendon will start at long odds against Sydney, the AFL's most in-form team.
The Bombers pushed the Swans in round 14 at the SCG, losing by a point, but Sydney look much stronger and have enjoyed a better run into the finals.
The Swans also have a much better finals record in the past few seasons but Worsfold wants his team to relish the challenge.
"It's not intimidating," he said.
"The key thing is, we haven't worked our backsides off to qualify to play finals thinking we're going in and hoping for an easy game.
"We want to play finals because we want to play in the big stuff against the best teams in the comp, when there's more at stake."
Worsfold said they were yet to decide how to match up on Sydney star Lance Franklin, who has a strong record against the Bombers.
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