Hawthorn star midfielder Will Day has taken a significant step forward in his recovery after suffering a stress fracture in his foot last month.
After spending the last six weeks in a moon boot, Day was given the all clear to remove the support brace on Wednesday.
Hawthorn High Performance Manager Peter Burge said the progress was "fantastic news" for the 22-year-old.
"Following some scans on Wednesday, Will has been able to get out of his moon boot and he can resume body weight walking," Burge explained.
"He will now have a staged progression with his rehab program, this will be walking initially, then Alter-G running and then land-based running.
"That timeline will still be reasonable, but the plan is still the earlier portion of the season looking to return to play."
Meanwhile, defender James Blanck is set to undergo surgery next week after rupturing his ACL in the club’s recent intraclub match.
Burge said it was important to delay the procedure for a week to let the swelling go down, based on the advice of the surgeon and the club's medical team.
Fellow defender Denver Grainger-Barras is expected to return to play in 12-14 weeks after undergoing a successful surgery on Monday following his ‘turf toe’ injury.
"He had an incident where he stood on someone else's foot as he was jumping and hyper-extended his toe," Burge added.
"Our Head Doctor Liam West consulted quite a number of people and other clubs who have seen players with this injury.
"It's a tricky injury - you can take a conservative management or down the path of surgery, and potentially get a better result and that's the path we've gone down."
After rupturing his achilles towards the end of last season, Chad Wingard is also continuing his positive trajectory with his rehabilitation.
"He's going so well at the moment... he has done some individual skill work with coaches this week, he's running at speeds of 90 per cent of his maximum speed and is doing repeat sessions of this," Burge said.
"The next progression is for us to decide when he returns to footy training... in a month’s time from now it's going to be pretty exciting to see where he's at."
Draftee Will McCabe is set to miss at least the next three months after scans confirmed he had sustained bone stress in his lower back.
Burge said the club would take a conservative approach in McCabe’s recovery timeline.
"Unfortunately Will finished a training session recently and reported some back soreness, being a young player we wanted to do some more investigation, so we sent him for scans," Burge said.
"That showed that he had some bone stress in his back - so he's had to scale right back now and move into a non-weight-bearing program.
"It will be a very staged process and progression, and a careful one at that - like all our first-year players they're on managed training when they come in and he was on that program, but unfortunately we've ended up in this position."
Meanwhile, Changkuoth Jiath has commenced his rehabilitation after suffering a hamstring strain at last week’s intraclub last week.
This new injury is unrelated to groin and achilles complaints that impacted the 24-year-old’s campaign last season.
"He plays at an intensity which is as high as anyone... unfortunately he had an incident where he was running at speed and went to change pace and injured his hamstring in that action," Burge said.
"He has started low-level jogging again, he's moving, he's active, which is a positive.
"The great thing is that he had a really good preparation pre-Christmas and post-Christmas, so he's got that training history there.
"It's a little bump in the road for us, but we'll get him playing football as soon as we can."
Second-year Hawk Bailey Macdonald has commenced running outside after experiencing bone stress in his femur earlier this month, while Seamus Mitchell has resumed non-contact skills after a successful surgery on his jaw.
Both are expected to make their respective return to play in the early few rounds of the season.
Watch the full update with Burge below.
