The first 15 minutes of Saturday's Dreamtime at the G match will be all-important.

After enduring the week from hell, Richmond risk unravelling altogether if they get off to a slow start.

On the other hand, Essendon have begun matches so poorly this season that coach Matthew Knights claims they are lucky to have won four of their eight games.

Should the Bombers get their run and carry game going from the first bounce, Richmond could be in dire straits following a week of speculation over coach Terry Wallace's future and allegations of player unrest.

"We have been slow starting, which is a bit of a concern," Knights said on Friday.

"You don't like to be giving starts and to give a five-goal start to a top of the ladder team (St Kilda) last week is certainly playing with fire and we couldn't recover.

"I think maybe only one game we've started at quarter-time as good as I would have liked so that's an area of our game we've got to improve."

While the side has taken a quarter to focus, Knights said he was impressed by their ability to run down rival teams.

"The positive to that is the resilience to keep coming and to keep giving their best effort, even though they're chasing," he said.

"We've probably been fortunate to win four games really.

"Four and four is probably a good result considering our starts haven't been good so that's something we'll be looking for on Saturday night, to start a bit faster."

Out-of-sorts forward Scott Lucas has been named as an emergency for the match after serving penance in the VFL and Knights said the important spearhead would probably be back in the side soon.

"Scott's attitude's been first class, it just shows what a terrific, strong person he is," Knights said.

"Obviously he's not happy playing in the VFL, he'd be preferring to be playing senior football as would everyone on our list, but I'm catching up with him weekly and when he comes back I'd like to see him play good football.

"I'm sure his senior recall is not too far away. There's no guarantees on when that will be or won't be. It will depend on Scott's form and the team's form and that's the only way I can judge it, on its merit."

Knights said midfielder Mark McVeigh had nominated himself for the reserves this weekend after missing long periods through injury.

Knights praised McVeigh for admitting he needed time in the seconds to regain form but said he wanted him back as soon as possible and would closely monitor his form on Sunday.

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