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Four Essendon players who were at the club in 2012 are in their squad for Saturday’s AFL pre-season match against St Kilda.
Nick O’Brien, Jackson Merrett, Elliott Kavanagh and Lauchlan Dalgleish were named for the Morwell game.
Last month, the AFL Commission gave Essendon permission to use top-up players through the NAB Challenge as the club awaits the verdicts from the anti-doping tribunal.
It was understood that all 25 players currently at the club who were there in 2012 would sit out the pre-season games until the verdicts were known.
That is to protect the anonymity of the charged players.
Those players whose cases are before the tribunal are serving provisional suspensions and by not playing in the NAB Challenge, they preserve potential back-dated suspensions if found guilty.
O’Brien, Merrett and Kavanagh were on the senior list in 2012 and Dalgleish was a rookie-listed player.
Of the quartet, Dalgleish was the only one not to play any senior football in 2012.
Essendon’s squad for the Saturday twilight game features all 13 top-up players approved by the AFL.
They are either former AFL players or from Essendon’s VFL team.
The top ups are Mitch Brown (previously Geelong), Mitch Clisby (previously Melbourne), Josh Freezer (Essendon VFL), Aaron Heppell (Essendon VFL), Clinton Jones (previously St Kilda), Anthony McDonald-Tipungwati (Essendon VFL), James Magner (previously Melbourne), Marcus Marigliani (Essendon VFL), Sam Michael (previously Brisbane), Jared Petrenko (previously Adelaide), James Polkinghorne (previously Brisbane), Jordan Schroder (previously Geelong) and Sam Tagliabue (Essendon VFL).
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