\n Jake Bowey will will undergo surgery after sustaining a Lisfranc injury\n <\/p>\n
Jake Bowey kicks the ball during the match between Carlton and Melbourne at MCG in round 19, 2025. Picture: AFL Photos<\/p>\n
MELBOURNE premiership defender Jake Bowey will miss the start of the 2026 season after sustaining a Lisfranc injury early in the pre-season.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The 23-year-old will undergo surgery on his foot this week following consultations with specialists in recent days.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Bowey produced a career-best campaign in 2025, finishing fourth in the ‘Bluey’ Truscott Medal after averaging 22 disposals, five intercepts and five marks from 23 appearances.\u00a0<\/p>\n
But now the star dashing backman will be sidelined for at least six months in a brutal blow ahead of Steven King\u2019s first season in charge of the Demons.<\/p>\n
Bowey isn’t expected to be available across the first 12 rounds of the 2026 season at this stage.<\/p>\n
Melbourne’s defence will look different in 2026 following Judd McVee’s decision to return to Western Australia in October and move to Fremantle.\u00a0<\/p>\n
That led the Demons to make a late pursuit of Changkuoth Jiath, before executing a trade with Hawthorn on deadline to bolster their defensive stocks.\u00a0<\/p>\n
With Christian Petracca and Clayton Oliver departing on deadline day, Trent Rivers was expected to spend more time in the midfield than in defence next year.<\/p>\n
Melbourne finished 14th\u00a0with just seven wins this year, leading to the departure of 2021 premiership coach Simon Goodwin.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The rise of Bowey as a star was one of the few highlights, but now the Demons will need to deal without the 2020 first round pick in the early stages of next season.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Jake Bowey will will undergo surgery after sustaining a Lisfranc injury Jake Bowey kicks the ball during the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":347911,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[560],"tags":[638,64,63,55,639,85,83],"class_list":{"0":"post-347910","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-afl","8":"tag-afl","9":"tag-au","10":"tag-australia","11":"tag-australian-football-league","12":"tag-australianfootballleague","13":"tag-sports","14":"tag-text"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/347910","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=347910"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/347910\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/347911"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=347910"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=347910"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=347910"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}