FREMANTLE midfielder Michael Barlow appears set to return against Geelong on Friday night and coach Ross Lyon says he won't be restricted by his fractured finger.
Barlow suffered the injury in the round 14 loss to Collingwood and required surgery.
He went close to playing last week but needed another week to recover. Lyon said he should play against Geelong and has full range of movement in the finger.
"Michael feels really confident," Lyon said prior to training on Wednesday.
"If he gets through training he'll play. So it'll only be a week earlier than the surgeon predicted. Footy clubs are always a little bit more aggressive.
"I think he'll probably play with a bit of strapping. We'd pick him to be unrestricted. If we thought he was going to be restricted, we wouldn't pick him.
"The bone's healed. He's got full range of movement. It was unlucky. He got it caught in a jumper. We're pretty confident with him. He could have played last week, but it was a bit of a risk. We think there's no risk at this point."
Barlow appeared to train without issue. Skipper David Mundy also trained on Wednesday after suffering a concussion against Melbourne last week. Lyon expected Mundy to be available.
"We're really optimistic there," Lyon said.
"Until he gets through it's not 100 per cent obviously.
"They do the cog state test. I think he's passed that. He'll train. As long as he feels well he'll play.
"It wasn't a huge hit, he continued and then he just felt a bit wobbly. So we tapped him out. It's a short week. He's really keen to play obviously as captain."
Matthew Pavlich will play this week but will not travel to Gold Coast in round 18. That will mean barring injury he will play his 350th match against the Sydney Swans in round 19 at Domain Stadium.
"He won't go to Gold Coast next week," Lyon said.
"Those real big travels, particularly in the context of where we're at we're just trying to look after him a little bit."
Lyon said there would probably be only one or two changes from the side that lost to Melbourne last week. Second-year player Josh Deluca has been pushing for a debut but Lyon said he still has work to do and he felt it would be tough to drop particular individuals following such a poor team performance.
"It's so hard to cut one or two out of the herd when it was an across the board performance," Lyon said.
"We'll pretty much go with the same group. There might be one or two changes.
"(Deluca is) pushing, he needs to get pushing. There's still a third of the year to go. It's a long way to go. He's got to create an opportunity for himself."
Lee Spurr and Ed Langdon did some sprint work away from the main group at the start of Wednesday's session but both appeared to be moving well.
Michael Walters and Zac Dawson did some skills work on their own early in the session while the main group broke into handball drills but it is not unusual for the Dockers players to be segregated through parts of training.
