Bundee Aki and Mack Hansen will be available for Connacht's final Champions Cup pool game at Stade Francais as Andy Friend urged his team to learn from their 'growing pains' against Leicester Tigers.
Hansen has recovered from a recurring calf injury that kept him out of the opening win over Stade in Galway and the back to back losses to Leicester either side of Christmas.
Aki got into a row with the referee Mathieu Reynal after last Saturday's last-gasp defeat to the Premiership leaders but swiftly apologised for his behaviour afterwards.
The Ireland centre has today been issued with a citing commissioner warning over the incident, in contravention of Law 9.28, but that will not prevent him from being available to Connacht boss Friend for Sunday's game.
The westerners have all but made the knock-out stages of the competition for the first time.
Regardless of the province's result in Paris, it is highly unlikely that Castres will be able to overhaul Connacht in the pecking order for the last 16.
But Friend is eager to add a second pool win to that opening win over Stade.
"Where we're fortunate as a team is that we've got some real depth of players who haven't been playing," said Friend.
"So I've no doubt that we've got some new faces there but at the same time it's a really important game for us because in Europe at the moment we're one from three, and who knows what's going to happen with Castres.
"All we know is we have to turn up to Paris on Sunday, we need to play our best brand of rugby and if we do that and we put out a really good performance I truly believe we can win and that's all we're going to focus on.
"We're going to pick a team for a 4G pitch, we're going to need to be fast and be stronger in our set-piece, we need to pick a team that can express that and show that.
"You may well see a few new faces in there."
Connacht have had to flip a switch quickly after the disappointment of seeing their 18-point lead over Leicester overturned in the dying moments.
Friend believes the game can be a serious learning curve for his side, who just ran out of belief in the end.
"I don't think it was a conscious thing, probably it was a subconscious thing where we got in this kicking battle," he surmised.
"And you've got to understand the way Leicester play too, Leicester want you to give them the ball back and want you to give them opportunities and what we did on the weekend, shy of the last 20 minutes, we took the chances, we kicked the ball back and stayed in that contest.
"We didn't run when they wanted us to run but when we got into their half we did run and we caused them some real issues, and we just stopped doing that.
"Listen, I don't think we're afraid to win.
"It was another great learn for us and we'll be better for it and my comment to the players on Tuesday was, 'whenever you grow it hurts, there's growing pains and we had a big pain on Saturday that did hurt us all, but out of that growing pain you're going to be bigger, better and stronger'.
"Sometimes in life you put yourself in a position and you don't know if you deserve to be here and maybe you panic a bit. Not panic, but you think twice about it and aren't as sure as you need to be.
"I can't explain it but what I do know is that we've learned from that. Listen, every game we seem to get good learns out of it.
"What was really pleasing was we had Sunday, Monday off, there were a lot of conversations going on over the weekend, people owning things, people putting their hand up and saying so many good things happened but at the end of the day we let an 18-point lead slip.
"So when we bounced back in here on Tuesday there was no hiding from that. It was put to bed and we have got an energised team now looking forward to Stade."
Get the latest sports headlines straight to your inbox by signing up for free email alerts
