Darcy Parish will be available for selection when the Essendon match committee meets to select the team to take on Sydney on Friday night. 

The 19 year old has missed the last two games with a calf injury but has trained strongly in recent days and has been given the all clear to return to the field.

“Darcy had that tibialis posterior injury which is a muscle in his calf, obviously it was a low grade injury to one of the smaller muscles in that area,” High Performance Manager Justin Crow said. 

“He’s recovered really well and he’s now done a couple of weeks of training.

“He trained well today and he’ll be available to play this weekend.” 

Mitch Brown will also be available this weekend after overcoming an ankle injury. 

The 26 year old was helped from the field in the dying stages of the match against Melbourne in round six. 

“Mitch has also made a really good recovery, he trained well today and we’ll expect Mitch to be available and play this weekend,” Crow said.

There are promising signs for Jayden Laverde with the third year player stepping up his training load ahead of a possible return as early as next week.

“Jayden was involved in the main training today … we’re really excited to see him hopefully, all going well, next week,” Crow said.

“Jayden has a meeting with his surgeon this afternoon where he’s hoping to get that final tick off and then the rest of it is making sure his conditioning is ready to play.”

Patrick Ambrose is a month away from returning from his quad injury while Ben McNiece is expected to miss this week’s match after picking up a knock during training.

“In the pre-season around March he had some whiplash issues from a collision out at training,” Crow said. 

“He took a knock in the session (last Saturday), he didn’t finish training – we had it scanned and he’s got a little bit more of an issue with the whiplash that’s re-aggravated.

“We don’t expect him to get up for this weekend and then we’ll assess his improvement over the coming days.”

The Bombers matches against the Swans on Friday and Williamstown on Saturday in the VFL come after the Club’s mid-season bye.

With ten home and away games remaining, Crow said he’s happy with the overall health of the playing list.

“We’ve got most of our players available,” he said.

“They trained really well on Saturday and again today.

“We’re doing some good peak intensity work where we’ve got our intensity ‘above the line’ – so our guys are in a great place to perform over the coming month.”