Coach Marc Johnstone looking to ring in changes for GFL clash on Saturday against Panthers

Mines Rovers selectors were facing tough decisions on Thursday night as coach Marc Johnstone plots the return of a host of front-liners for Saturday’s clash against an unbeaten Railways in the Goldfields Football League.

The Diorites have notched seven wins to be second on the ladder, but Railways have had their measure in two previous clashes this season by margins of 27 points and 57 points.

Johnstone’s trump cards include big forward Jordan Strahan, who resumes with the blue-and-whites after severing ties with the Harvey Bulls before the June 30 clearance deadline.

Sam Turner, Connor Darcy, Brad Dick, Kasey Murison and Jake Douglas are each in the mix for a recall, with Delson Trott due to make his way back through the reserves.

“There’s five or six who trained really well on Tuesday night and barring Logan (Hughes) and Delson (Trott), everyone else should be ready to go,” Johnstone said.

“We ‘re chasing wins to hopefully secure second spot, which is obviously important, but we also want to go into the finals series having beaten everyone.

“We don’t want to just be hopeful that we can beat Railways come the finals and we get two chances to do that between now and then.

“Ideally we’ll be putting our best foot forward this weekend on Sir Richard Moore (Sports Centre), which looks a lot better deck than when we met Kalgoorlie there a couple of weeks ago.

“We’re very thankful that everyone has stayed off it and that the city council have done a lot of work to get it up to scratch.”

The Diorites face the premiership favourites this weekend after not playing a game for three weeks, following a club bye on July 6 and last weekend’s general bye for the annual country championships in Perth.

“It is hard when you get a double-bye,” Johnstone said.

“Obviously we had eight or nine (players in the GFL team last weekend) for the country championships.

“But just trying to keep the rest of the squad motivated and finding that right balance at this time of the year between when to maybe give them a night off is the main challenge.

“I did read in the paper that they (the GFL) might next year look at having a weekend off after the (country) carnival, which would be a triple bye for us and very hard to manage.

“That’s interesting, but the mood among our group and around the club generally is good at the minute.”

Mines Rovers are coming off an upset defeat against Kalgoorlie by a point in round 13.