Luke Parker could miss the next two to three weeks following a clash with GWS’s James McDonald in the opening quarter of Saturday night’s Sydney Derby.
Parker suffered a hair-line fracture of the jaw as a result of the incident, and while he returned to the field, he was eventually subbed off in the third quarter of the match.
Swans physiotherapist Matt Cameron told SwansTV that fortunately Parker’s injury won’t require surgery and with a bye this week he may only miss one match.
“Luke has got a hair-line crack in his jawbone, so he is going to be out now for probably two to three weeks,” Cameron said.
“There will be no surgery required for Luke, it’s not displaced, and it’s not a large fracture.”
The Swans other injury concern from round one was a knee injury to ruckman Mike Pyke in the Swans reserves win over UWS.
“The other injury from the weekend was Mike Pyke, who tore his posterior cruciate ligament in his knee after contact in a marking contest, but (there was) no other damage to his knee,” Cameron said.
“He won’t be playing this week, and we’ll need to see how the week pans out for him. They sometimes can improve quite quickly so we’re not ruling him out for next week, but they can extend out to four to six weeks.
“He does look good now and he is walking around and his quad’s working well, and he’s going to be in gym and hopefully even running by the end of the week.”
Ryan O’Keefe and Rhyce Shaw, who both missed round one, are also making improvements with their respective injuries.
Cameron said both O’Keefe and Shaw are likely to return to regular training over the next week.
“Ryan had the bone bruising in his knee, and he’s up and running this week and there are no problems at all, and we hope we will have him training on Friday and then fully next week into next week’s game (against Fremantle),” he said.
“Rhyce jarred his back and sometimes with back problems they can be a little bit difficult to settle down.
“He’s certainly improving and we’re hoping to have him running by the end of the week and training next week.”
