Bulldogs coach Dean Harding forecast late changes to his side, which took the field against Wodonga Raiders on Monday.

The Panthers played against Myrtleford last Saturday, giving them an extra 48 hours to recover for the contest at Lavington Oval.

Albury and the Raiders will lock horns five days after taking on their cross-town rivals on Anzac Day while North Albury meets Wangaratta, which is coming off a six-day break having played the Rovers on Sunday.

Harding said, in an ideal world, the Bulldogs would have played the Hoppers in round six.

“From our point of view, common sense says we should play Albury or North and Raiders play the other one,” he said.

“I know it’s hard when they do the draw, but a five-day turnaround is really tough.

“I’d hate us to get a nasty injury this weekend because of the short turnaround.

“We’ve done bugger all this week, the boys are still in recovery mode.

“We’ll have to make a final decision on our side Saturday morning.

“We’d love to be able to name an extended bench with extended emergencies.”

The Bulldogs brought former captain Sam Maher, Reed Jackson and first-gamer Louis Miller into the side to face the Panthers, at the expense of assistant coach Brett Doswell and Joe Boulton.

“We’ll just see how the boys pull up as to whether we make any more changes,” Harding said.

“The boys will have a little kick around on Friday night but that will be it, you don’t really get to train properly, which is the hardest part.

“We can’t do much about it. We brought it up with the league but nothing came of it.”

Anzac Day combatants haven’t been faced with a five-day turnaround since 2011, when the Tigers and Hoppers responded with comfortable victories the following round.

Ovens and Murray general manager Aaron McGlynn said while the short break was nothing new, the league would look to eliminate it from the fixture in coming years.

He said it was too simplistic for the Raiders and Bulldogs to automatically play the Tigers and Hoppers after the Anzac Day round.

“If you throw other things in like that, it just upsets the fixture with the standard amount of compromises we already have to put into play,” he said.

“We know it’s not ideal. Going forward we will look at eliminating that as a concern.

“Five-day turnarounds happen in the NRL but we wouldn’t look at cutting it back any further than that.”