IMPORTANT Bulldogs Lindsay Gilbee and Shaun Higgins will be given until the last minute to prove their fitness ahead of Saturday's clash against the Sydney Swans.
The pair was named in the team on Thursday evening, but football manager James Fantasia admitted Gilbee (foot) and Higgins (groin) were both racing the clock to run out onto Manuka Oval.
"Those two lads trained on Thursday, but we are going to have another look at them during another light run on Friday morning," Fantasia said.
"They're a little bit better than they were on Wednesday [when Rodney Eade rated them 'a bit better than 50-50' to play] so those odds might have increased, but they're definitely not over the line yet.
"We'll have to make calls on those guys that might come right down to the death-knock."
The Dogs made two changes to the side narrowly defeated by the Cats last week with talls Ryan Hargrave and Stephen Tiller coming in for Tim Callan and Jarrod Harbrow, who are emergencies with Dylan Addison.
"The two boys who have missed out are very unlucky and it's probably more to do with some match-ups that have kept them out," Fantasia said.
"I don't want to overplay it, but we do have those two guys that we need to monitor, this weekend at least, in Gilbee and Higgins so they are two handy emergencies to have.
"Tiller has been in some really good form in the twos and we talked about including him last week so he thoroughly deserves his opportunity.
"Hargrave is 'Mr. Consistency' really so he really helps us down back. He comes in after a couple of weeks out and that was probably a little bit more than we had actually expected.
"He had a little bit of bleeding in his driver muscle and we felt for sure that it would be one week only."
The Dogs fly out for Canberra late Friday morning and will have a light run at the venue in the afternoon.
One emergency will travel, with the results of fitness tests for Gilbee and Higgins to determine who.
