The one-game suspension to Andrew Brayshaw may not open the door to untried midfielder Nathan O’Driscoll despite the first-year player being in the mix for selection in recent weeks.

O’Driscoll has been named as an emergency for the past three games and his chances for selection increased with the 21-year-old Brayshaw coming out of the team.

Unfortunately for O’Driscoll, the 19-year-old hasn’t played a competitive game of football since 24 July, when he had 19 disposals and four inside 50s for Peel against West Perth in the WAFL.

Since then, he’s been a part of Fremantle’s quarantine group and has been unable to maintain his match fitness in the WAFL.

“That (not playing in the WAFL) probably does make it a little bit harder (to earn selection),” senior coach Justin Longmuir said.

“I'm not ruling him out by any stretch. The fact that he hasn't played now for a couple of weeks probably doesn't set him up to succeed as well as we'd like.

“We haven't got a lot of depth either. We'll just weigh that up today at selection.”

Longmuir said it was more likely that the likes of Connor Blakely and Darcy Tucker would play more midfield minutes.

“We need to find another mid. Connor Blakely has been in the team, Darcy Tucker has been in the team, they've probably been more outside players,” Longmuir said.

“We'll look to spin them maybe through the middle of a little bit more to pick up a bit of the slack.

“It's never easy to replace your better players and in form players, but I feel like we've got the personnel there that can do it.

“There would be a number of players come into the mix. Sam Switkowski's back from injury. Bailey Banfield is back from injury, we obviously have to replace Nathan Wilson as well. Selection might be a bit trickier this week.”

Fremantle have fielded one of the youngest teams in the AFL in the past three weeks following Nat Fyfe’s season-ending shoulder surgery.

With an average age of 24.05, their round 21 team against Brisbane was the youngest of the round, while Freo’s teams against Sydney and Richmond were the second-youngest.

It means Justin Longmuir won’t look to get creative at the selection table so Freo’s most inexperienced players can have continuity in their roles.

"We're going to be pretty young this weekend, again. I think the last couple of weeks, we've been the youngest team in the comp,” Longmuir said.

“When you're young, you just want to keep things pretty simple and allow players to play their normal roles and you don't want to be tinkering and throwing the magnets around because they can lose their way a little bit.

“We'll continue to put our players in roles that they're comfortable with and allow them to go out there and play to their strengths.”

Gallery: Main training 12 August
Match day information: RAC Derby
No appeal for Brayshaw suspension