AFL Injury Update: Worpel sidelined but avoids surgery

Hawthorn midfielder James Worpel has avoided surgery on his ankle, with High Performance Manager Peter Burge confirming the 26-year-old would be sidelined for the next three to four weeks of the Hawks' season.

Worpel sustained the ankle injury in the second quarter of Hawthorn's 20-point win over Sydney on Friday night and was subsequently subbed out of the match.

Burge also provided updates on Calsher Dear, Mitch Lewis, James Blanck and Sam Butler in this week's injury update, while also confirming Changkuoth Jiath's return to play through the VFL last week.

James Worpel - Ankle (3-4 weeks)

"He's been for scans and the scans are relatively promising. He's got a moderate-grade syndesmosis ankle injury. We're thinking it's a three to four-week turnaround. He certainly won't need any surgery. It'll be conservative management like we've done before. We've had Meeky (Lloyd Meek), (Jack) Scrimshaw and Nick Watson last year with the same injury and we were able to turn them around in a pretty reasonable time. We're confident that we'll be able to do the same with this one."

Calsher Dear - Back (TBC)

"He'll have his 12-week scan this week. He was out there today, I was watching him doing some slow, acceleration work and technical running. He's had a little bit of kicking and really, the scan is to tell us is there's been good progression and if there is good progression, we can progress his training intensity in the rehab space. It's not a scan for return to skills, it's a progression of his conditioning. There will then be another scan down the track as well but let's just wait and see what we find out."

Mitch Lewis - Knee (TBC)

"He's progressing through rehab, as I said in the last report. He's made some great progress. Watching him run last week, opening up and the ability to absorb load and prepare himself in his stride has just been fantastic. His strength work and the specific work from his trip to Philadelphia is really paying off."

James Blanck - Knee (5-7 weeks)

"He fully trained today. It wasn't our main session for the week but he did every single drill and he's really stringing some back-to-back football sessions together now and the next phase for us will be progressing to absolute full contact training, 18v18, match play and our main sessions, which is probably a week or two away. But at this stage, we're looking at the Round 5/ Round 6 weeks for some return minutes through the VFL."

Sam Butler - Leg (TBC)

"He's progressing well, building his conditioning. Some of the symptoms he's been experiencing in the past week or so have settled and he's now making some more adaptations to conditioning training. We'll need to string some more sessions together before we make the decision to come back into skills which is probably two weeks away at this stage."

An update on Changkuoth Jiath, who is available for selection following his VFL return to play

"He played some minutes in the VFL, played 75 minutes of match-play which was almost the whole game in a practice match at VFL level. He had great intensity and numbers through his running and he got plenty of the football, I understand. He's recovered really well and fully trained today so that's been a great result over the last week. Now, we'll just keep progressing his involvement in training. He's available for selection as well."

Watch Hawthorn's full Round 1 Injury Update below.

03:09

Hawthorn AFL Injury List - Round 1

Click here to read article