Essendon could welcome back four players for Sunday’s JLT Community Series match against Gold Coast.

Brent Stanton, Joe Daniher, Aaron Francis and Michael Hartley are nearing full fitness and will be available for selection provided they get through the rest of training this week.

Tom Bellchambers is continuing to make strong progress in his recovery from a knee injury with the ruckman beginning some change of direction work at training.

Fellow big man Sam Draper is also stepping up his training program after arriving at the Club with knee tendonitis.

“Sam did half of training today and we’ll see him do more and more drills over the next fortnight,” High Performance Manager Just Crow said.

“We’d be hopeful we might see him in some match-play in around two to three weeks.”

Despite the finger injury to David Myers that will sideline him for six to eight weeks, the Bombers have a healthy playing list entering the second week of the JLT Community Series.

“We got through really cleanly out of the first JLT match and also the VFL intra-club on Saturday,” Crow said.

“Today at training we had 42 out of 44 complete the main drills."

In the opening JLT Community Series match against Collingwood, the Bombers rested a number of players throughout the game.

Michael Hurley played a half, while Jobe Watson, Matthew Leuenberger, Ben Howlett and Dyson Heppell got through about three quarters.

Crow expects the individualised approach to managing the players match-day output to continue.

“We’re spreading some of the guys match-play over the whole pre-season period,” he said.

“We’re aware we’ve still got five weeks to go until the season so we’ll be making the most of that time and looking at each player on an individual basis.”