A familiar face was on the training track this afternoon for the first time in over three weeks. Adam Ramanauskas ran laps with Dustin Fletcher during the team’s skills session at Windy Hill. Essendon skipper James Hird also jogged a few light laps around the oval before back heading inside. Bomber coach Kevin Sheedy said at this stage Hird is only a 30% chance of playing against Hawthorn and mentioned that he expects Dustin Fletcher and Damian Cupido both to be available for selection.

""It is a short week for us and we wouldn't play him (Hird) if he is not right. Unfortunately we worked all last week to overcome another injury and I suppose if he doesn't play this week he can get both those injuries right,"" Sheedy said.