ST KILDA coach Scott Watters says the players coming back into the Fremantle team to take on the Saints on Sunday do not affect the way his team will approach the game.

Matthew Pavlich, Aaron Sandilands, David Mundy and Michael Barlow have all been included in Fremantle’s selected side after missing through injury.

But Watters said the Dockers’ team changes made little difference to his planning for the clash at Patersons Stadium.

“It’s irrelevant. I couldn’t care less who is coming back in. We have a way we want to play. We want to keep providing exposure to our younger players,” Watters said on Saturday.

“Players don’t always turn up in their first game back and play exceptionally well either. They have a good side but we are pretty focused on what we need to do as a group.”

The Saints have made several changes to their own team with Nick Riewoldt and Justin Koschitzke not making the trip to Perth, while veteran Lenny Hayes comes back into the team.

Hayes had been mentioned as a possible match for Fremantle tagger Ryan Crowley who has had some highly-publicised  match-ups with North Melbourne’s Brent Harvey and Geelong’s Joel Selwood in recent weeks.

But Watters said he didn’t expect Crowley to go to the 2010 Norm Smith medallist.

“He won’t play on Hayes. And if he does, fantastic,” he said.

“For Lenny I think he would be more surprised if he didn’t have company in a game. I would think there are other targets but again we will wait and see what happens.”

It is a youthful St Kilda team that has been picked to take on a relatively experienced Fremantle team but Watters said the game would serve as a vital learning tool for players at the beginning of their careers.

“Our younger players in particular are looking forward to the challenge. We’ve got three or four who haven’t even played on this ground,” he said.

“It is a great learning curve for them, we want them to be really aggressive about the way that they play. We think they have got good leg speed so we will have a crack. We’re looking forward to it.”

Watters said the absence of Riewoldt and Koschitzke enabled the Saints to try a few different options in attack.

“It will present opportunity to Rhys Stanley to potentially play a bigger role. Maybe Tom Lee, maybe we will go with a smaller forward line setup and throw Ahmed Saad and Terry Milera in,” he said.

“I guess one of the opportunities you have when you lose some of the permanent fixtures is you can be a little unorthodox. We will use that as an advantage this week.”