Line up the boxes in the recovery of both Nic Naitanui and Tom Barrass and put a neat little tick alongside both.

In a major step towards senior football, both played for the WAFL Eagles against East Fremantle and were significant influencers in a 72-point victory.

Naitanui, 11 months after suffering his second serious knee injury, was the major focus, but the return of Barrass was equally significant before both called it a day seven minutes into the last quarter.

A large media contingent was on ‘Nic Nat watch’ and they would have been impressed by what they saw, the athletic big man getting things started out of the centre square as the young midfielders relished his capacity to direct the ball to their hands.

Naitanui was on seven or eight minute rotations, had 25 hitouts, 10 possessions, took three marks and applied some of his trademark second effort pressure.

Young East Fremantle midfielder Morgan Bailey felt the full extent of that physical force when he was on the end of a bone-jarring third-quarter tackle.

It was almost a perfect hit-out for Naitanui against former Fremantle ruckmen Jon Griffin and Luke Strnadica.

Barrass was also ticking along nicely until his day ended with a cork to the calf.

Until then he had been impressive with several intercept marks in the seven he took, along with 15 possessions.

While those players naturally attracted the attention, veteran Drew Petrie emerged from retirement to have 14 possessions and six marks in defence.

The presence of those three players – along with Fraser McInnes – gave the team a much-needed injection of size, which was not available to the team when they played West Perth a fortnight ago.