ESSENDON’S Andrew Welsh admits to having a few butterflies in his stomach in the lead-up to his return match against Melbourne on Friday night.

The game will be Welsh’s first for Essendon since injuring his ankle in the pre-season.

“I’m pretty nervous,” Welsh said. “It feels like I haven’t played in a fair while. I’m just excited to get back out there tomorrow night with the boys.”

The 26-year-old has played the last two games for the Bendigo Bombers in the VFL after teammate Michael Quinn tackled him heavily in an intra-club match in February.

“Because of the severity of the injury we thought I needed a couple of games in the reserves to get the confidence up. I was lucky on the Queen’s Birthday, it was a wet rainy day,” he said.

“The things you miss out of training is the contested footy and the hard hits so I got plenty of them last week and after the game they thought it was pretty good and I felt good in myself.”

Welsh said he initially feared the injury would keep him out of the game for 12 months but after consulting his surgeon, a mid-season return seemed a realistic goal.

“When he got in and operated he used the new technology which I spoke about before. He said he thought I could do it a lot quicker, the resources we’ve got at the footy club were going to help that and my job was to get back out on the footy field,” he said.

“I was in here every day getting physio, doing rehab work to give myself the chance to get back as quick as I could.”

Welsh is the latest experienced Bomber to return from injury, which he says will help the young Essendon side freshen up.

“We’ve got a really good group of senior players like Mark McVeigh, Brent Prismall and myself coming back now who can steady the ship while these guys have the chance to freshen up their legs and then come home strong later in the season,” Welsh said.

“It happens to every club that their younger players do get tired and it is how you balance that out and the role of the senor players is to step up and feel that burden while the younger guys get fresh legs back into them.”