Albury United will be without captain Caleb Martin for Sunday's clash against Twin City at Kelly Park.
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The star midfielder was shown a straight red card after lashing out at Wangaratta striker Andrew Barisic off the ball during last Sunday's 3-0 loss to the Red Devils at Jelbart Park.
Martin was offered an automatic game plus three matches for the offence, but has until next week to appeal the additional weeks.
There's also several key names missing from the Wanderers' camp ahead of the weekend.
In a major blow, goalkeeper Rohan Pearce will miss the remainder of the season travelling overseas.
On top of that, Jason Bowe is out injured, Jack Kirk has moved to Melbourne for work, while Michael Shimmin potentially tore tendons in his ankle at training on Tuesday night.
Jarrod Murphy has returned from the sidelines and will fill the void left by Pearce in goals.
"Jarrod has kept before. He was buzzing when we gave him the role," Twin City coach Shaun Wilhelm said.
"He has come back from injury and was obviously playing at centre back for us at the start of the year.
"He used to be a junior keeper and has kept on and off since then.
"On the weekend (against Albury Hotspurs), credit to him, he did really well and he's ready to go."
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Caleb Matchan is a welcome addition and will likely be used in the centre of defence to cover Bowe and Kirk.
United got the better of Twin City 5-0 earlier in the season and Wilhelm knows his side has to be much better defensively.
"Obviously last week we had a bit of a slip up against Hotspurs (losing 2-1), a couple of sloppy errors at the back cost us," he said.
"Our side is running on a bit of belief that come finals we'll be ready to go and anyone on our day we'll give a good run.
"We're just struggling at the moment to string games together, we played well against Boomers, mediocre against Myrtleford, really good against Wang and had another mediocre game last week."
Meanwhile, Boomers captain Andrew Grove will miss a further three weeks after receiving a straight red in his side's loss to Albury United a fortnight ago.
Grove sat out last weekend's win against Albury City and hasn't opted to appeal the remaining three weeks on his suspension.
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