Three Hawks will face fitness tests in a bid to return for the trip to Tasmania to take on the Crows this Friday night.

Nick Watson has overcome illness that saw him miss the clash with the Western Bulldogs last week, while James Worpel is nursing a severe quad cork and Jack Scrimshaw is working his way back from an ankle niggle.

While a more exact return timeline has been established for Will Day, as he continues his comeback from a stress fracture in his foot.  

Hawthorn High Performance Manager Peter Burge gave an update on the trio, as well as further details on Mitch Lewis, James Sicily and Bodie Ryan. 

Nick Watson (Illness) – Test

“He’s feeling a lot better, he’s trained over the weekend and will train fully this week and be available for the weekend."

James Worpel (Quad cork) – Test

“A fairly significant corkie, enough for us to rule him out of the game, sub him out last Thursday night and has been quite sore over the weekend, is starting to move around a little bit better early part of this week. But we’ll need some more time, with Wednesday main training and the game being this Friday, we’re going to need every day of those four days to get him up for the weekend, so he’ll be a test at this stage.”

Jack Scrimshaw (Ankle) – Test

“Yeah just had a niggling ankle that’s been bothering him now for over a week or two, so we made the decision last week that he didn’t play. And we just want to get him right and get him feeling really strong  with that, so we put him back into the rehab group last week and we’ve done some rehab running today and he does feel better. We’ve got him as a test this week and we’ll reassess on Wednesday at our main training session what he does and his availability beyond that for this weekend.”

Mitch Lewis (Knee) – 2 weeks

“He’s returned to full training now, nearly two weeks under his belt of full training and it’s so fantastic to see him out there and cracking in and doing what he does best. So we’re looking at the game after the bye, if there was a game next week, that would be a possibility also but there isn’t, so definitely looking at some strong minutes in the return game after the bye through the VFL.”

James Sicily (Hip/Abdominal) – TBC

“We’ve just taken a step back to try and settle things down there and he’s certainly settling. So really just some very low-level straight line running at this stage and we’re looking to progress that over the next week, with the aim to return after the bye but we’ll just have to keep reassessing day by day and how far he can progress. We want the best version of Sic out there, so right now he’s just doing some straight line running and we’re doing some strength work and just giving him that chance to settle down so we can build back into football. And we’ll have some more updates over the next week about what that looks like after the bye.”

Bodie Ryan (Clavicle) – 6-8 weeks

“We’ve added some weeks to that return, just given there was a little bit more damage that the surgeon found when he went in and did that surgery. Nothing that’s going to be too long-term but we just need a little more time for that to be rock solid. It’s more around the contact training, certainly conditioning and running and non-contact skills he’ll be able to do reasonably soon. But just giving ourselves a little more room to make sure with this young player in particular, that we do the right thing by the player and return at the right time. So we’ve added a few more weeks to that timeline, it could more either way, but we’ll work through that over the next couple of weeks and see where it lands as we get back into football training.”

Will Day (Foot) – 6-8 weeks

“Really well. People will notice that we’ve actually put a more exact timeline on his return, we’re aiming for Round 20, so we’ve listed that as a 6-8 week return. So missing the next six games would bring us to Round 20, but that’s everything going perfectly, so there’s a range there of time, but right now we’re setting that as the timeframe. It’s looking good at this stage, he’s outside running and progressing his straight line running and we’ll progress his conditioning over the next couple of weeks and beyond that a return to football. But there’s still some work to do ahead of us, but it’s all looking really positive at this stage.”

Watch the full Round 14 Injury Update below.

Hawthorn AFL Injury List – Round 14