RICHMOND coach Terry Wallace says match committee will be tough this week, but for all the right reasons.

Wallace said up to half-a-dozen players would be pushing to move up from the VFL to the AFL this weekend, a marked change from recent times as the club fought injuries.

"Probably, we've been in a situation over two or three years where we've almost gifted games to some young players, to get games under their belts, to get them to 20s and 30s [games played] as quickly as you possibly can," he said.

"You might have carried a bloke for a week or two, or two or three extra weeks in the senior side, where he might have been struggling for a little bit of form, where now we've got guys queued up waiting to play.

"I would have thought that there were at least six players from the affiliate side Coburg that had the ability to knock on my door and say 'I reckon I've done enough to play senior footy'."

One of those in the mix will be Trent Cotchin, who was snapped up by the Tigers with their first pick (No. 2 overall) in last year’s NAB AFL National Draft. The 185cm, 80kg midfielder has been hampered by injury since before being drafted, but is on the way back, despite missing the entirety of the Tigers pre-season.

"His second half on the weekend [in the VFL] was excellent, and that's the sort of footy that we got him for. He started to show us the sort of form that we'd hope he could bring to us," Wallace said.

"He's a very good player around stoppages – wins his own footy – and he's very skillful as well. A player that can play the inside game okay, and then has got the ability to use the ball on the outside, is exactly the reason why we picked him up.

"I've always said we've got to be light on his expectations because he didn't do any of the summer. He hadn't done any work at all up until when the guys started in round one, so that's five months behind where other guys are at.

"He's had his four games, but he still hasn't done the summer, so he could play good footy this year, I've got no problem about that, but he'll play better footy with a summer under his belt."