The Raiders have been dealt a blow with forward Alan Tongue and centre Joel Monaghan ruled out of the match against Cronulla on Sunday at Canberra Stadium.
Both players entered early guilty pleas on charges of dangerous throws in last Saturday's game against the Wests Tigers.
Monaghan will miss one week for his grade one dangerous throw while Tongue will be out for two having pleaded guilty to the more serious grade two charge.
The forced omission of Tongue and Monaghan has provided space in the team for Jason Bulgarelli in the centres and for the recall to first-grade football of centre James Evans.
Evans has won a National Rugby League recall after fighting his way back from an injury that forced him to learn how to run again.
Evans, an ACT junior with the Tuggeranong Buffaloes, will start on the bench against Cronulla on Sunday, replacing the suspended Tongue.
The 24-year-old last played first grade in round seven last year when he was tackled into a goalpost and suffered season-ending knee ligament damage.
He needed a full knee reconstruction, which required an arduous rehabilitation program. He made his return to the Raiders' Premier League team five weeks ago.
"It was 13 and a half months before I played again," Evans recalled.
"There were times during the rehab that I felt like throwing the towel in - it took a year off my life," he added.
Canberra coach Matthew Elliott said Evans' recall was a just reward for the effort he made to get back on the park.
"I've always been a huge Jimmy Evans fan," he said.
"This is a player who basically had to start over again - I mean he literally had to learn how to run again.
"He's worked extremely hard to get himself in shape and has put some promising performances together for the Premier League side."
Evans said constant encouragement from the coaching and support staff was a driving force in keeping him focused during the rehabilitation period.
"Matty [Elliott] and Ed ([Hollis, the physiotherapist], those guys just kept me going and kept reinforcing that I could make it and that there was a chance for me," he said.
"I didn't expect to play first grade at all this season. I'm so excited to play, just to be a part of what's happening this season and play with all these great players."
Interchange forward Ben Cross is another unlikely to play on Sunday after coming down with chicken pox.
Cross has been named as one of five players on the interchange bench but is unlikely to recover in time to play. THE Canberra Raiders' web site has just passed 1,000,000 hits for this season alone.
At an average of 6600 hits per day the web site has been far more popular than last year.
A Raiders' spokesperson said the site is roughly 10 times more popular this year than last.
Whether the increased popularity of the site is due to the new and improved maintainence of the site this year or to the new and improved Raiders' performances is unclear.