Fremantle are almost certain to rest Matthew Pavlich for Sunday's AFL pre-season competition clash with Richmond at Subiaco Oval, but coach Mark Harvey denies the skipper is carrying an injury.

Pavlich, who struggled with a knee injury during the latter part of 2008, played three quarters of Fremantle's intra-club match last week.

But the 27-year-old key forward failed to join the main group at training on Monday and was instead consigned to an exercise bike on the sidelines.

Harvey said the club was merely taking a cautious approach with the 194-game veteran who, along with Aaron Sandilands, is Fremantle's most important player.

"Probably Pavlich won't play (against the Tigers), that would be fair to say," Harvey said.

"If it was round one he would be playing but at this stage we are monitoring his training and want to lighten him off a little bit.

"But having said that we'll just see how he comes up later in the week and he might be one of those interchange players that we use for 50 per cent of the game.

"At the moment we have to monitor him and how many games we give him between now and round one."

Harvey said Des Headland was about two to three weeks away from resuming due to a shin injury.

"Des did a fair bit of training up until such stage he got his problem," Harvey said.

"He'll come up quickly though."

Chris Tarrant, Marcus Drum, Adam Campbell and Hayden Ballantyne are also set to miss the encounter, but Harvey declared Stephen Hill, Fremantle's first pick at last year's national draft, a certain starter.

"I said a week ago he'll be playing and he will," Harvey said.

"He's just got some ability at the moment that suggests he can play a game at this stage.

"You already saw last week they (the fans) clapped every time he got the ball.

"Now I don't want to build this up to be too big but the kid - you look for a kid like that just like we did with a Rhys Palmer last year."

Richmond have already declared Ben Cousins a non-starter for the game, but Harvey said he had a plan just in case the 238-game veteran did take to the field.

"If he does I might give a young player a job on him just to see how he's coping with the real AFL if you know what I mean," Harvey said.

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