Brisbane premiership utility Ty Gallop is available for selection after serving his three-game suspension, but coach Chris Fagan is unsure how to tackle the selection headache.
Gallop has been a revelation for the Lions in the past 18 months and is seen as a first-choice key position player. Veterans Ryan Lester and Darcy Gardiner have held the fort at the Lions for the better part of a decade, but one may be expensed for Friday's clash with Collingwood at the MCG.
The other option is the youngster misses out, which would make it a fourth straight week without competitive football as the club's VFL outfit finished their season last week, labelling the situation a "dilemma".
"I don't know. We might spend two hours on this this afternoon," Fagan said.
"Our dilemma is that our reserves (VFL) team has finished now, and so there's nowhere for him to get a game.
"So yeah, it'll be on our agenda, and he's a chance to play, but we're not 100 per cent sold on that either.
"I'm not worried about his fitness because he'll work his backside off if he's not playing a game of footy. The thing that's hard to replicate is match practice."
The Pies have flirted with potentially managing players for this week as the club can't make meaningful ladder movements.
The Daicos brothers, ruckman Darcy Cameron and forward Dan McStay, have been floated, while a host of veterans are in line to return from injury.
Fagan and the Lions have opted to focus on their best 23, as for them, the outcome will be pivotal to the club's premiership chances and the hope of securing a top-four spot.
"From our perspective, we don't want to get caught up in who they may or may not play. It's not our issue, it's their issue," Fagan said.
"We openly discussed that yesterday that that's going to be the issue of this week.
"It started a couple of weeks ago with Collingwood when it sort of became apparent that maybe they wouldn't be able to change their fortunes in the last round of the season, so they might rest a few players.
"We've got a mature group of players, and generally speaking, like most weeks, we focus on what we need to do rather than what the opposition might be trying to do or who they might play.
"We're turning up with our best available team, and we're trying to win the game, and that's all we need to focus on, and not get caught up in all the debate about what may or may not happen."
