There was positive news from the injury room this week, with Swans physiotherapist Matt Cameron confirming that a number of Swans were nearing full fitness.
The Swans rehab group has continued to reduce in size in the latter stage of pre-season, with co-captain Adam Goodes returning to team training after a long layoff with a knee injury, and Nick Smith and Marty Mattner also taking part in team training for the first time last week.
Speaking to SwansTV on Tuesday, Cameron said Goodes was now approaching his final recovery hurdle since injuring his posterior cruciate ligament in last year’s grand final.
“Because (Goodes) injured his knee’s PCL in the grand final, it did take it a couple of months to settle down but he was back pre-Christmas and he’s been with the team and he’s nearly ready to play,” he said.
“We’re just getting to the final stages of his preparation.”
Cameron also confirmed that defensive duo Smith and Mattner were both likely to be fit ahead of the main season.
“Nick had an arthroscope at the end of the year just to clean up some joint damage, so he had a delayed start,” he said.
“He’s back training with the group now and we’re just building him towards the start of the season.
He added that Mattner, who missed the early stage of pre-season recovering from a hip injury, has made good progress in the New Year.
“Marty had some hip issues towards the end of the year last year and had a delayed start to the pre-season,” Cameron said.
“We deliberately gave him 2-3 months off running and so we’ve been building him since after Christmas and he’s training as well and we’re just building him towards the start of the season.”
Young Swan Tom Mitchell will also return to the track for the first time this week after a series of frustrating injury setbacks.
“He’s just about to start training with the team,” Cameron said.
“Unfortunately he has had a bit of a bad run. He had some problems with his knee last year and then he finished the year a bit early with a foot problem and then developed another problem on his other knee in his pre-season period so we had to back off a little.
“He’s certainly very fit at the moment and he is team training this week and we’ll see how he goes over the next few weeks as to when he’s ready to play.”
In other pre-season injury news, Swans defender Rhyce Shaw will face a test at the end of the week after a calf injury sustained at training sidelined him for the team’s first NAB Cup clash, while ruckman Shane Mumford is likely to make his return from an ankle injury in the final weeks of pre-season.
Cameron said Mumford should resume full training next week.
“He’s been a little bit slow to get up and going again but he is up this week, but won’t be team training until next week,” he said.
“With three or four weeks out we’re not sure if next week is a possibility (to play) so maybe the week after.”
Cameron also confirmed that Gary Rohan’s road to recovery was on the right track, but was unable to say when the 21-year-old would be fit to train.
“Gary is still in rehab and he started running before Christmas so he’s up and running now and he’s really in a fitness campaign at the moment working on his running,” he said.
“After such a long time down, it does take a long time to bring his fitness back up and get back to the level he needs to be before he can even start training with the team.
“Everything is going well for him at the moment and in the next month or so we’ll probably have a better idea of when he will be training with the team.”
