Injuries have impacted several City players but the Bathurst club do get back a trio of players for what is one of the hardest away trips to make in the competition.

"We're without Kelsey Willott who is injured and could be out for the season and also Jenny Roberts who was injured last weekend," City coach Jill Long said.

"We do bring in Bec Bosianek, Ange Behan and Anna Cartwright. That's three back and two out. After last week's performance we're hoping to have a better game but with it being an away trip we'll have to wait and see what happens."

City knew after their opening round 3-2 win over Bathurst rivals Souths that they could still make a step up to the next level in attack.

But in the following 2-0 loss to Orange Ex-Services they went backwards instead.

Chances went begging in front of the Ex-Services goal for City and Long said that can happen again against a Lithgow side who look red hot through their opening two games.

"We have to score, plain and simple," Long said.

"We're lacking that ability to put the ball home. Last week we probably had somewhere around 20 shots but we weren't able to put them in.

"We'll be concentrating on that as much as we can and we'll see what we can bring forth.

"We've been practising that shooting. It was just a case of them going wide. We have to make better use of those chances."

City and Panthers have played out some classic games through the years and favouritism has often being hard to assign in the matchup - usually favouring the home ground.

That will be the case this Saturday as the Panthers will be favoured to do the job in Lithgow.

Bathurst City will fight hard at the Lithgow clash though to keep their place inside the top four on the ladder.

"It's always been a good game between the two of us. There's never been a boring match," Long said.

The clash at the Lithgow Hockey Complex gets underway at 1.30pm.