Izak Rankine will be available to play as the SUNS head into Round 1 of the 2021 AFL season, while an injury to a young SUNS ruckman will see him miss the rest of the year.
Izak Rankine missed the AAMI Community Series match against Brisbane with an ankle injury, but has recovered well and will train fully this week and put his hand up for selection.
“Izak’s going really well, we opted to take a pretty cautious approach with Izak before the second practice match,” Head Physiotherapist Lindsay Bull told the Qscan Injury Update.
“He’s re-joined full training today and is moving really nicely so we anticipate Izak will train fully on Thursday.”
New SUN Jacob Townsend was also unavailable for the match with concussion but is back training with the main group.
Fellow recruit Rory Atkins has had an interrupted pre-season but has also returned to training.
“When Rory joined us from the Crows he had an AC joint injury so he had surgery on that to make sure that’s nice and strong and stable for the season moving forwards,” Bull said.
“Rory’s been training with the group the last week and a half and is just looking to bank some consistency in training now.”
In disappointing news, young SUN Matt Conroy has sustained an injury to his ACL and will miss the 2021 season.
“Unfortunately for Matt he injured his ACL on Friday,” Bull said.
“He’s seen a specialist today and we’ll be getting that reconstructed this week so it’s bad news for Matt and the SUNS team unfortunately.”
Forward Josh Corbett has been recovering from a substantial cork sustained during a VFL practice match but is expected to be back in non-contact training later in the week.
Jy Farrar is also carrying a quad strain from a VFL practice match but has recovered well and is anticipated to re-join the main group in the coming days.
As reported earlier this month by SUNS Media, ruckman Zac Smith injured his PCL in the VFL practice match and is now two weeks post-injury.
“We’re working really hard on his strength at the moment and the next phase for Zac after another couple of weeks of strength (training) is to get him back running and we’ll see his return to play status from there,” Bull said.
SUNS draftee Elijah Hollands is progressing with his ACL rehab after recently hitting the one-year post-injury milestone.
“(Elijah’s) got very strong around his legs on both sides but more specifically around the side where he’s injured his ACL,” Bull said.
“We’re just putting him through some high-end agility progressions at the moment as well as a lot of strength work because we want him to be really robust moving forwards.
“We’re taking our time with Elijah and he’s been really patient and working really hard, so it will be exciting for him in the next month or so to get him back into training.”
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