IT'S been labelled a comeback to make Lazarus blush, but last night Nick Malceski's amazing story of recovery took another step when he was named in Sydney's 25-man senior squad to play Essendon on Sunday at ANZ Stadium.

While coach Paul Roos said there was no guarantee the defender would make his return in the seniors instead of the reserves, he confirmed the club was seriously considering it, and would make a decision after training today.

Today it is just 12 weeks since Malceski underwent the revolutionary procedure of French surgeon J.P. Laboureau, which re-built his right knee using an industrial-strength synthetic fibre instead of traditional methods. On February 17, Malceski collapsed to the ground in a pre-season match, rupturing his anterior cruciate ligament and it was expected his season was over before it had begun.

"Naming him in the 25 doesn't guarantee he's going to play, but if we're at all thinking about it, we have to name him before trimming the squad to 22 tomorrow," Roos said. "He still needs to get through training tomorrow, and if he gets through training and gets ticked off medically, then we have to decide. At least this gives us the option now of playing him in the seniors.

"The decision now is in two stages. Medically he needs to be ticked off first. If he does, then he just becomes one of other eligible players.

"If we have to have the discussion, I'll have it with the match committee guys and obviously Mal will be involved as well.

"Everyone is sitting back waiting to see what happens with this story, including ourselves. We put him in a couple of handball games last night and some tackling drills and that sort of stuff and he was fine with that, and we'll tick some more off tomorrow, maybe some marking and other stuff.

"It's obviously been an amazing process having watched it unfold and everyone is waiting to see what the outcome is going to be."

While the usual process and one used with a number of senior players this season - most recently Peter Everitt - has been to play at least one, sometimes two, games in the reserves to regain match fitness and touch, Roos said he was confident of the work Malceski has in his legs.

"We've been over that. We realise he's been training for about seven weeks, so in terms of his physical preparation, it's probably similar to when you come into your first practice game," he said. "Physically he's feeling good. From a fitness point of view he's been doing a lot of running and a lot of skills and basically he's been doing stuff for seven weeks now.

"Like we do with any player coming back in after an injury, whether it be Tadhg [Kennelly] coming back from a shoulder or Barry Hall from a wrist injury, you're determining how much game time based on what amount of running they have done.

"We'd put Mal at 70-80 minutes of game time, there's no way we would expect him to play 100-120 minutes of footy. Generally, guys coming on and off the bench are playing 60-80 minutes of footy, so it will be around about that mark for Mal whether he plays seconds or seniors."

Roos made one straight switch in bringing Luke Ablett back from injury to replace Ben Mathews, while adding Malceski, Nick Smith and Luke Brennan to an extended bench.

Essendon also named several players set to return from injury, and, if they make the final 22 today, the Bombers will be particularly boosted by the inclusion of Adam Ramanauskas, Mark McVeigh and Dustin Fletcher.