Martin is all but certain to make his AFL return this weekend against North Melbourne.

Richmond star Dustin Martin is all but certain to make his long-awaited return from injury against North Melbourne this weekend in a battle that could ultimately determine this year’s wooden spooners – and the No.1 draft pick. Martin was subbed out of Richmond’s loss to Carlton last month after experiencing back spasms.

As a result, he has since missed games against Fremantle, GWS, Port Adelaide and Collingwood, all losses, with the nagging injury. And in his absence the Tigers have dropped to last place on the back of their sixth consecutive defeat, on Sunday, comprehensively beaten 14.9 (93) to 9.13 (67) by Collingwood at the MCG.

But they have the chance to post the third win of Adem Yze‘s tough first season in charge when they face the lowly Kangaroos on Saturday, with veteran leader Martin set to make his return. “(He’ll play against North Melbourne) as long as he doesn’t flare up,” Yze said.

“He’s had three (training) sessions now. He had a good session yesterday and got some good volume. Now we’ve got a couple of sessions where we’ll be able to get some training load into him and he’ll be in a better position to perform. I can’t see a reason why he wouldn’t play next week.”

Yze is also confident Daniel Rioli (ankle) and Tim Taranto (back) will be fit to face the Kangaroos despite picking up injuries in the loss to Collingwood. Prolific midfielder Taranto was substituted out of the game during the third quarter because of a back complaint.

“He’s just got a tight lower back,” Yze said. “He tweaked it at the start of the game, in the first quarter, and then it just got worse and worse. He’s a leader of our footy club and he tried to toil away, tried different things, tried to play different positions – he was happy to play full-forward – but it was too high-risk.

“We’ve got a six-day break going into next week’s game and we just needed fit guys out there. He was pretty selfless in saying that he needed to get off the ground … but he should be OK next week.”

Jordan De Goey faces yet another injury setback

Collingwood star Jordan De Goey‘s injury struggles continued over the weekend after failing a fitness test 24 hours before the match against Richmond. He was withdrawn from the side, with his replacement, first-year forward Joe Richards, then withdrawing through illness in a situation Magpies coach Craig McRae admitted was “not ideal”.

The Magpies still went on to post a comfortable win over the last-placed Tigers, keeping their premiership defence alive, albeit just. But ahead of this weekend’s crucial clash against Carlton, flag hero De Goey’s fitness is once again under a cloud.

The 28-year-old has been limited to 12 appearances this season and has struggled to have his usual explosive impact when available. And McRae isn’t confident that he will be available against local rivals the Blues. “It’s difficult to know what’s going on there for me … other than he looked really sore this week,” McRae said.

“He’s been looking really sore early in the week and we’re de-loading him and running straight lines and getting him to the line. But this week he looked really sore, so we’ll work through that.”

“Each week seems to start in the same place and maybe not playing this week might help us start in a different place. But again, we’ll wait and see on that.”