Jack Carty has emerged as an injury doubt for Connacht's United Rugby Championship meeting with Munster on New Year's Day.
The out-half is still carrying a foot injury from the Heineken Champions Cup defeat to Leicester Tigers before Christmas, with the province hopeful he can pull through training this week.
"We're still looking at him to be honest," said head coach Andy Friend.
"He ran today and ran well today but we'll need to see how he pulls up tomorrow. The form he's in at the moment, you'd love to have him involved."
Carty has started every game for the province this season, and scored 13 of their 18 points in their October defeat to Munster at Thomond Park.
Aside from Carty's foot injury, the province look set to welcome back both Mack Hansen and Paul Boyle for the game in Galway this Saturday.
Hansen hasn't played since the URC defeat to Leinster earlier this month, while Boyle has been sidelined with injuries to both his shoulder and achilles.
Denis Buckley is also stepping up his involvement as he nears a return from an ACL injury. The loosehead prop hasn't featured since suffering the cruciate ligament injury on his 200th Connacht appearance last June, however the province say he has been integrated into team training and could feature at some stage in the next month.
Both sides will be coming into the weekend off the back of postponements, with Connacht's derby against Ulster and Munster's clash with Leinster both called off due to Covid-19 cases.
However, Friend says as things stand none of the Connacht players and staff are having to isolate, adding that he's desperate to see this weekend's game go ahead.
"I think one of the pluses is that we as a club are proud of is our ambition to always be able to field a rugby team and in the last two years we've had games called off but we haven't been the cause of those. Our ambition is to continue that run.
"Ideally this game is going to be played on the weekend. It's our intention to be playing the game, but it's a forever changing world. Let's see what happens.
"I know Munster are keen for a run given the lack of games they've had in recent weeks."
Munster have close to a full squad to choose from this weekend, aside from the longer-term injuries of Joey Carbery, RG Snyman, Calvin Nash and Rowan Osborne.
The province returned to training yesterday having given the squad an extended Christmas break, with their St Stephen's Day clash against Leinster postponed early last week.
The players were allowed four days off over the festive period, before attention turned to Connacht this week.
However, they are expected to mix their selection this weekend, as they look to give gametime to players who have been unable to play in recent weeks following their Covid-enforced layoffs.
"We've had to factor that into this week as well, there’s no doubt about that," said senior coach Stephen Larkham.
"Just to make sure, particularly those guys who sat in isolation for 20 days, that we’re reconditioning them both mentally and physically.
"And you’ll see that in the selection this week. But definitely, it’s a long season and now we’ve got these other games locked into some slots over the course of the next nine weeks we’ve got to make sure that we’ve got a really healthy squad for the next two months.
"So it’s not just about getting guys back onto the paddock as quickly as possible, we’ve got to make sure they’re going to be 100 per cent fit and 100 per cent ready when they get back out there."
The Australian [above] added that he's hopeful their recent complications with Covid-19 on their tour of South Africa may see them avoid a further breakout of the virus in the short term.
"It might be a blessing in disguise that we had a number of cases coming back from South Africa and hopefully that makes them a little bit more immune.
"We saw on the week all but one game went ahead so the other teams are getting affected by it but hopefully we've had our little run and we can push forward. We’ve got enough guys who’ve had the virus now, we can probably field a team every single week going forward."
