Richmond has suffered an injury blow ahead of tomorrow night's clash against Geelong with David Astbury and Brandon Ellis to miss, but Daniel Rioli is a chance to return.
Tigers' coach Damien Hardwick said today Astbury and Ellis had failed to shake off soreness after last week's loss to North Melbourne and would miss the battle against the ladder-leading Cats at the MCG.
But Hardwick was hopeful Astbury (sore hamstring) and Ellis (sore groin) would miss only the one week.
"Dave Astbury and Brandon Ellis won't play, they are out injured,'' Hardwick said.
"They are probably just one weeks at this stage. They got a little bit sore throughout the game and just haven't quite come up.
"This time of year the fatigue factor starts to set in and bodies start to break down a little bit, so we are hoping at this stage that it is just the one week."
The pair are among three to four changes that Hardwick flagged from the team that suffered a 37-point loss to the Kangaroos last week.
Hardwick said Rioli would be in the selection miss to return after his spell in the VFL last week.
"His performance at VFL level, it was OK, what we were probably after was his work rate to get back to what we knew and he started to work his way back into that,'' Hardwick said.
"He trained incredibly well this week, but once again he will be a guy that we will certainly consider for this week's game against the Cats.
"Every now and then players, whilst they perform, they don't quite perform to the level of expectation that we have of them or they have of themselves.
"So Daniel went back and rediscovered that part of his game. We know when he's at his very best it certainly helps our football side win a lot of games so we're glad he recaptured that last so he will certainly come into consideration for selection tonight."
The loss of Astbury is a blow ahead of a match-up against the Cats' in-form big forward Tom Hawkins, but Hardwick backed young Ryan Garthwaite to take on the task.
"Young Garthwaite has played on him before and did a really good job on him so we are confident that he'll be able to do the job again,'' Hardwick.
"A lot of it is based around, if he gets clean ball inside 50m he is going to be hard to stop. We know most sides if you put pressure on the ball it makes the defenders job a little bit easier so we will be certainly looking to get that part of our game back because it was not to the level that we liked last week."
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