The majority of Essendon’s injured quartet from last week’s impressive victory over St Kilda remain a chance to retain their spot in the line-up to take on Richmond on Friday.

The Bombers were ravaged by injuries against the Saints and were forced to close out the game with no rotations in the final term.

While Orazio Fantasia has been ruled out of the team, Cale Hooker, Brendon Goddard and Adam Saad could still take their place at the MCG against the Tigers.

Club Physical Performance Manager Justin Crow said Hooker had started his week well as he pushes to play in the must-win clash.

“Cale had some knee cap pain the game, which he wasn’t able to run through,” Crow said on the SKINS Injury Update on Tuesday.

“He settled down pretty well, he did some running today – which was pain-free – but we’ll be waiting until the end of the week to test him properly.”

Scans on the weekend confirmed Goddard had not suffered any serious injuries after going down early in the game against his former side, and Crow said the club holds hope that the veteran can play on Friday.

“Brendon had that hyperextension incident with his knee. He sustained a little bit of a bone bruise and that can be unpredictable,” he said.

“When we ran Brendon today he actually looked quite convincing, but again we’ll be waiting until later in the week to confirm his availability.”

Saad was felled by a heavy bump from Saint Nathan Brown in the opening term, with Match Review Officer Michael Christian sending Brown directly to the tribunal for the incident.

But the dashing defender appears to be a strong chance to line up this week after passing all concussion tests so far this week.

“Adam was knocked out in the game, he was quite good later that night (and) he was good the next day.

“He passed his concussion testing today and he completed part of training without issue.

“We’re assuming that if he keeps going well he’ll be made available, but we’ll be tracking him really closely through the rest of this week.”

Fantasia will be watching the Bombers anxiously from the sidelines in the next fortnight, with his minor hamstring strain ruling him out of the home and away season.

Should Essendon claim a finals berth, Fantasia is expected to be ready to fire.

“With about 10 or 20 seconds to go in the third quarter, Raz was sprinting and hurt his hamstring,” Crow said.

“When we scanned that there is a low-grade strain of the muscle with no tendon involvement, which is good news.

“But that’s a miss-two-weeks, play-in-three-or-four (type of injury), so if we made finals Raz would be expecting to be ready for the first AFL final.”

The first bounce against the reigning premier is set for 7.50pm at the MCG on Friday.