Matthew Leuenberger is expected to be available for this week’s match against Carlton, but Josh Green will have to wait another week.

Essendon’s big man stocks could be boosted by the return of Leuenberger who was put through a searching match simulation session on the weekend.

He’s recovered well and training on Thursday remains the only hurdle before the match committee considers his inclusion for Sunday’s clash with the Blues.

Green is making strong progress in his recovery from a hamstring injury and will complete a full week of training before he’s considered for the match against Adelaide. 

Ben Howlett has also been ruled out. Read more about his injury here.

David Myers is seeing specialist, Greg Hoy, today and appears close to resuming ball work after damaging a finger tendon last month.

“We’re expecting Greg to say he can take the splint off and start handling the football, so that’s a big milestone for David,” High Performance Manager Justin Crow said.

“His fitness is really good from a running and whole of pre-season point of view.”

Jordan Ridley could also increase his training load next week as he continues his recovery from a back problem.

“This will be Jordan’s sixth week since he hurt it, so we’ll re-scan him next Monday just to see if that part of his back is healing as expected,” Crow said. 

“If that’s the case, he’ll start back running next week."

Essendon will be looking for its third straight win when the side meets Carlton on Sunday.

Last week the Bombers kicked the last five goals of the match to beat Brisbane.

Crow said the players’ ability to find an extra burst of energy was reflected in the GPS data. 

“Normally in a game across the league you see an eight per cent drop off from the first quarter to the last quarter in terms of work rate,” he said.

“This was a rare occurrence in terms of us actually lifting our work rate by three per cent from the first to the last quarter.

“We were really impressed with how the guys were able to respond and lift their work rate late in games.

“We’ll take a lot of confidence from how we’ve done that over the last fortnight … it’s a credit to the players for putting in the work.”