The Sydney Swans return to the SCG this Thursday night for their Round Four clash with Essendon.

Ahead of our Round Four clash with Essendon on Thursday, Head of Physiotherapy and Medical Services Damian Raper provides the latest on the injury front with updates on James Rowbottom, Robbie Fox, Ben Ronke and Sam Naismith.

The key take outs:

Round Three recap
We managed to come away from the game against Richmond without any injuries, which is really good to see. There was a small laceration to Tom Hickey’s cheekbone but there are no issues apart from that.

Ben Ronke
Ben Ronke is going well with his rehab. He is continuing to run at the moment and build some leg strength.

Robbie Fox
Robbie Fox is progressing as per his plan. He sees a surgeon next week.

James Rowbottom
James Rowbottom was still sore last week and unfortunately was unable to get going. He has had a good run, trained yesterday and will test in training tonight for availability for this week’s game against Essendon.

Sam Naismith
Sam Naismith is now nine months post operation and obviously had a pretty slow build up with his rehabilitation; a lot of strength work throughout the back end of last year, started running in December. Straight line initially, building into change of direction work built up through January into some football skills as well.

Throughout February, we got some testing through Pitch Ready who are based in Canberra, and they looked at his change in direction work, his jumping and landing and passed all those tests with flying colours. He has been doing some integrated football skills throughout March and he is going to commence full training this week and we are looking forward to a strong full training block over the next few weeks.