MELBOURNE is set to unleash second-year rookie ruckman Jake Spencer for its opening NAB Cup clash against Hawthorn at Aurora Stadium next Saturday.

Demons coach Dean Bailey said after his team's intra-club hit-out at Casey Fields on Saturday that Spencer, a 203cm ruckman from Redlands in Queensland, would play barring mishap.

"Jake was good. He's trained particularly well and it's really good for him to take the ruck. He seems to have pulled up well, so it's going to be exciting to see him down in Tassie [against Hawthorn] next week," Bailey said.

"If he can get through training, Jake will be playing, absolutely. He was always going to play and he's deserved his chance and today we saw a little bit of what he can do.

Melbourne dynamo Aaron Davey is also a chance to play against the Hawks after he was rested from the intra-club clash.

Davey featured for the Indigenous All-Stars in last week's clash against Adelaide, and his coach said the club would take a ‘wait-and-see’ attitude towards his availability for the Hawthorn match. 

But Bailey is happiest about the calibre of the squad he has at his disposal. Last year, the Demons were forced to make some compromises with team selection when they went up against Geelong in the opening NAB Cup fixture.

"The great advantage is that we've got lots of blokes who can get picked, whereas last year, [Brad] Miller and [James] Frawley hurt themselves on a Thursday, before the game at Skilled Stadium."

"I think we brought in [youngsters Addam] Maric and [Kyle] Cheney. We had no one else after that. We wouldn't have been able to fill the team.

"This year, we've got 34 players who actually played the game [today], so that's a really good position for us to pick some competitive blokes."

Bailey said still 17-year-old young gun draftees Jack Watts and Sam Blease would continue to be monitored carefully in their first AFL-listed seasons.

"They're both very competitive young men, so we've been able to manage a program for them at the moment and we'll just see how they go," he said.

"If they progress and their schooling goes well and their training goes well, then they're like everyone else.

“But they've got to have done the work before we actually introduce them to playing the game”.