Swingman Sam Day will miss the entire 2017 season after suffering a dislocated hip in the opening quarter of Sunday’s JLT Community Series game against Brisbane.
Day successfully underwent surgery on Monday evening and the South Australian will now begin the long road to recovery.
“He’s okay. Had his surgery last night but fairly significant injury as we’ve spoken about already,” GM – Football Operations, Marcus Ashcroft, told the Optomo Injury Update.
“Hasn’t been seen that regularly over time getting a dislocated/fractured hip which is what he had. The surgery was a success, pretty extensive, a lot of bone damage and ligament damage around the joint obviously.
“But he’s now in rehab and will miss the whole year, we know that. So we’re more concerned with getting him into a rehab program the next bit of time. That’ll be non-weight bearing until six weeks.”
Ruckman Jarrod Witts split the webbing in hand against the Lions and will be aiming for the third JLT game to push his case for the number one ruck position at Metricon Stadium.
Witts suffered the same injury whilst playing for Collingwood last season before a subsequent infection led to a five-week stint on the sidelines. The SUNS medical team opted to be conservative with the 209cm big man to ensure there was no repeat in 2017.
“He’s pulled up really well. Again, he had surgery yesterday to repair that damage on his hand,” Ashcroft said.
“Had a similar episode last year. The worry last year is that it got infected and he missed a long period of time. We wanted to make sure that didn’t happen this time around so we took the conservative option.
“Put him into hospital for day surgery, got it cleaned out to make sure there’s no risk of infection. It was stitched up and he’ll be available to play in our JLT3 game.”
Recently re-signed utility Jack Martin was a late withdrawal from JLT1 with back tightness but will take his place for the SUNS in their second pre-season game against Essendon in Mackay this Sunday, as will the versatile Alex Sexton and key forward Peter Wright.
