Magpies face tough call with five players available to return to face Hawks

The hype surrounding the meeting of the two Farrer League flag fancies has been taken away somewhat by the Hawks' surprise loss to North Wagga last Saturday.

It's dropped the Hawks to third on the ladder and only clinging to a top-three spot ahead of their clash with the undefeated Magpies at Gumly Oval.

If TRYC's unbeaten start to the Farrer League season wasn't imposing enough, they are set to welcome up to five key players on Saturday.

Premiership players Dean Biermann (shoulder), Matt Parks (foot) and Todd Hannam (quad) are expected to be available to return from injury, as are recruits Jack Brooks (calf) and Mark Flack (broken toe).

TRYC co-coach Brad Aiken revealed however that only a couple will return via first grade.

"There will be five. Most of them will come back through the twos, to be honest," Aiken said.

"They've just been missing too much footy. We'll see. It's going to be a bit of a call.

"You can't take five guys straight back in. If we put five blokes in and five blokes get injured, it wouldn't look real great.

"Some of the other boys have been doing a pretty good job, we're six (wins) and zero (losses), so it's pretty tough for some blokes to miss out but we've got a few blokes who have just been kicking along a little bit."

Aiken revealed key forward Biermann is the one most likely to come straight back in.

"I think Dean will come straight back in," he said.

"Hopefully Dean can give us that extra little bit up forward and if we can get a mismatch and stuff like that.

"It's not a bad problem to have I guess."

Aiken and fellow co-coach Heath Russell were amongst the crowd at McPherson Oval last Saturday to watch the Saints upset the Hawks.

They aren't buying into the result too much.

"We're probably getting them at the wrong time to be honest. It probably would have been better if they won," Aiken said.

"Baz (Jake Barrett) would be pretty disappointed with their effort on the weekend and obviously a lot of their players would be too.

"A week's a long time in footy, as they say, and we're coming off a bye, which is sometimes not ideal. You're going well and you seem to be ticking all the boxes and then you have a spell and then you come out and you can play some pretty ordinary footy, even though you think you're fresh and you're ready to go.

"We'll tick every box this week, train well and I don't care how much we win by, as long as we keep ticking the boxes we want to tick and get some boys back."

Aiken said the Magpies won't be looking too much at the Hawks' recent form.

"We're not focused on them too much," he said.

"They've got some really quality players and they've recruited really well and they're probably still finding their feet with the guys coming out. They've had some injuries and they're still trying to get their right set-up, I guess, and we are too.

"We're just lucky that our depth looks a little bit better than theirs, without being disrespectful I guess."