Melbourne have officially ruled Jesse Hogan out of the Queen's Birthday clash against Collingwood, but the star forward is closing in on an AFL return after his cancer scare.
Hogan hasn't played since round seven after he was diagnosed with testicular cancer and underwent surgery.
The 22-year-old has responded well to treatment, and was an outside chance to resume against the Pies, but the club will err on the side of caution.
"He's close to being back out on the track ... we said at the start it was going to be four-to-eight weeks," Demons coach Simon Goodwin told reporters on Thursday.
"He's not that far away but he's now got to get some training into him; we'll assess him week by week.
"We're just going to get him back training, get him back into the program and feeling good and then we'll assess when the time comes."
The Demons trained on Thursday morning, with Jack Watts a limited participant after rolling an ankle earlier in the week.
But Goodwin expects he will train fully on Saturday and prove his fitness for the big public holiday clash.
Watts will continue to form part of a makeshift ruck brigade, along with Cam Pedersen and Tom McDonald, despite the return to fitness from a shoulder injury of specialist ruckman Jake Spencer.
"Jake won't play (AFL) ... he's going to play some VFL footy," Goodwin said.
"He's had seven weeks out of the game so we just think for his best preparation we'll give him a game in the VFL and be available the next week."
All Australian ruckman Max Gawn is still about two weeks away from resuming from a hamstring injury suffered in round three.
Monday's match is a pivotal encounter for ninth-placed Melbourne and the Magpies, currently 10th, with both sides on five wins for the season.
Collingwood onballer Taylor Adams added more spice to the much-anticipated clash with his recent comments about Demon-turned-Pie Lynden Dunn.
Adams raised eyebrows with his public assertion that Dunn had never played for a real successful club, but Goodwin said the banter had been taken in good spirits.
"It's a bit of fun. I think it's great for the game and a great bit of theatre," he said.
"A lot of what Taylor Adams has said is right - we haven't been a successful club for a long period of time and that's what we're striving to achieve.
"But for the theatre of the game, I think it's terrific."
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