After completing the majority of the pre and post-Christmas schedule, Jetta experienced soreness during training and underwent an ITB release earlier this week.
Coach John Longmire said while the setback was disappointing for Jetta, who missed three months with a shin issue last year, he didn’t expect this injury would affect his preparations for the upcoming home and away season.
“Lewis Jetta has done almost all of the pre-season to date, but he’s had a bit of a tight ITB band, which runs down beside your knee,” Longmire told SwansTV.
“He’s had a minor operation just to release that and we thought it was best to do it now because it still gives him the opportunity to be right for round one.
“There are still eight weeks before the start of the season, so we’re really confident that we’ll be able to get him back running in two weeks’ time and he should be OK for the start of the season.”
Swans defender Alex Johnson is expected to join team training by the end of the month after making significant progress on the track in the new year.
Longmire said he expected to see Johnson, who underwent hybrid-LARS surgery on his injured knee late last season following an unsuccessful traditional reconstruction, make his way back into the main group in the next fortnight.
“Alex is coming along pretty well,” he said.
“Obviously after the couple of operations that he had last year, which was a disappointing season for him, he’s had a pretty big pre-season to date and he’s done a lot of running.
“He’s had a couple of little setbacks here and there as you normally get coming back from a knee reconstruction, but he’s actually coming along really well now and he’s two weeks away from team training.”
Longmire said senior players Adam Goodes, Lewis Roberts-Thomson, Mike Pyke and Kurt Tippett are also making good progress on the track this month and should also start to filter back into group skills sessions in late January.
“There are a number of players now who have been on individual programs to this point who are slowly coming back into the team program,” Longmire said.
“Players like Adam Goodes, Lewis Roberts-Thomson and Mike Pyke are all on a similar type program and they’re progressing back into group skills now, and Kurt Tippett is another one of those.”
The coach also confirmed that young midfielder Tom Mitchell’s recovery from ankle surgery was ahead of schedule.
“Tommy Mitchell is probably in the same boat as Goodesy and LRT in that he’s in the group situation with skills and he’s coming back and doing that now, which is a really long way ahead of where we thought he was going to be when he got injured against Carlton last season,” he said.
“He had the operation back then and really since then he’s progressed really well and he had a great three-kilometre time-trial and we expect him back in the full team training in two weeks.”
In other injury news, Rhyce Shaw, who underwent LARS surgery late last season and Sam Reid, who missed a large chunk of 2013 with successive quad injuries, have resumed team training.
