PORT Adelaide's gifted forward Chad Wingard and midfielder Hamish Hartlett have pushed their cases to make senior recalls this weekend.
The duo, both recovering from hamstring strains, trained strongly on Wednesday ahead of Sunday's game against Greater Western Sydney in Canberra.
"They trained pretty well, they both looked all right," teammate Ollie Wines told reporters after training.
Hartlett has missed two games and Wingard one with their respective injuries.
"They have obviously got to tick off a few more things to go this week and hopefully they'll be there this Sunday.
"They're pretty talented players and they do some pretty special things ... they add a bit more star power.
"They were running around OK. From what we saw, we were pretty happy with how they did. They were up and about."
Port (two wins, one loss) downed Essendon last start after a heavy defeat to Adelaide which still stings at Alberton Oval.
Port copped great criticism for that loss - and Wines said it was justified.
"We were really disgusted in our performance," he said.
"We lost a lot of respect from that Showdown. Respect is something that is pretty easy to lose but pretty hard to gain so it's going to take a long time to start to earn that back.
"A lot of that negative criticism that we copped after that Showdown, I think it spurred a lot of the boys.
"We're not all into watching footy shows and listening to radio and everything like that, but you hear a bit."
Port enter Sunday's fixture against the Giants with key forward Jay Schulz (back) to be placed on the long-term injury list after having back surgery which will sideline him until the second half of the year.
MORE ON PORTADELAIDEFC.COM.AU ...
