Essendon High Performance Manager Justin Crow says the Bombers are well equipped to deal with the shorter than normal lead-up to the game against Melbourne.
The players spent Wednesday at the beach recovering and will have two light training sessions before Sunday’s game.
Crow told Bomber Radio although the turnaround is shorter than normal; there is enough time to have the team ready to play.
“Most weeks, most of our team are ready to train and play after four days – that’s probably consistent across the AFL, so five days we’re not expecting to worry us,” he said.
“We just need to keep our eyes open to each individual player in terms of how they’re coming out of the game and make sure we’re ready for that game on Sunday.”
Crow said fitness staff would closely monitor the players’ recovery over the next few days.
“As a high performance team we’ll provide advice on how each player is tracking to the match committee,” he said.
“Then they’ll make those decisions at the back end of the week when we’ve got a much better view of how players have trained and how they’re tracking.
“There is some merit in making changes based on management but if your best players are tracking well there is a good case to keep them in the side.”
One player moving closer to a return is David Myers.
The midfielder played his first game of the season in the VFL last weekend and finished with 35 possessions.
“None of us who saw David’s pre-season and previous month were surprised at all by that performance,” he said.
“He’s put in a lot of work, he’s had great consistency of running and actual football training.”