Wangaratta moving in right direction

The pre-season fancies lost three games in a month, including shock losses to Wangaratta Rovers and Myrtleford, before bouncing back, as expected, with an 80-point hiding of bottom outfit North Albury.

"Last week was a step in the right direction with our ball movement and the way we want to play," Newton said.

The Pies' 29-point loss to Myrtleford was one of the club's worst performances since re-emerging as a power club in 2017, although the club was without six of its best players, including Newton.

"We've obviously been down on our output for the last month, there's a few factors that contributed to that and injuries is one of them," he said.

"But we got to see some young kids come through over the last couple of weeks who've shown they've got some real potential."

Many of those talented youngsters have now returned to reserve grade with the big names returning in Matt Kelly, Mat Grossman, Jamie Anderson and Daniel Sharrock from injury, while Josh Porter was unavailable.

Newton, still considered the league's best player, hasn't played in seven weeks since tearing his pectoral muscle against Lavington.

The Doug Strang medallist has been in full contact training for three weeks.

"I felt I could have played against Myrtleford, but we didn't see any point playing with the risk involved," he said.

Had Newton returned early and re-injured the muscle, it would have been season over.

"It's good to finally get this 50^th game up, it's been hanging for a while," Newton said.

"I've never actually played a milestone game."

It's remarkable to think the 32-year-old, who debuted for Melbourne in Neale Daniher's last game as coach in 2007, hasn't reached 50 games at a club, although he has been dogged by injuries.

The clash is enthralling in that if results go against the pair, Raiders could be two wins out of the top five with only seven games left, while the Pies could be two wins out of the top three.

"Raiders are always pretty tough to beat at home, they play the ground pretty well, they've got some good players who like to get on the outside and run and carry, but they can win the ball on the inside as well," Newton said.