{"id":464746,"date":"2026-02-07T16:35:39","date_gmt":"2026-02-07T16:35:39","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/464746\/"},"modified":"2026-02-07T16:35:39","modified_gmt":"2026-02-07T16:35:39","slug":"afl-news-2026-melbourne-demons-injury-woes-jack-viney-out-for-the-season-jai-culley-arm-injury-bailey-smith-loses-licence","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/464746\/","title":{"rendered":"AFL news 2026 | Melbourne Demons injury woes, Jack Viney out for the season, Jai Culley arm injury; Bailey Smith loses licence"},"content":{"rendered":"

A Sherrin has yet to be kicked for the first time in the 2026 season, but the Melbourne Demons<\/a> are already battling the chaos that comes with a building injury list.<\/p>\n

9News Melbourne’s Trent Kniese reports there are growing fears about the immediate playing future of Jack Viney, while Jai Culley is also under an injury cloud.<\/p>\n

Viney has been battling Achilles soreness for a lengthy period of time, alarming some fans that he may not be set to return to action in time for round one.<\/p>\n

READ MORE: Dad convinced Aussie star to ‘send it’ with trick that rocked Olympics<\/a><\/p>\n

READ MORE: What Tassie gun plans to do to cocky English opponent<\/a><\/p>\n

READ MORE: Hazlewood ruled out of World Cup in huge blow to Aussies<\/a><\/p>\n

However, Kniese understands that the injury may be worse than first thought, with officials at the Demons headquarters under the belief Viney could be out for the season.<\/p>\n

As per an injury report accumulated on January 14, it was expected that Viney would return to training at a full capacity as of February 6, but that was not the case.<\/p>\n

It still remains unclear when exactly, or if, he will return to training this year.<\/p>\n

\"Jack<\/p>\n

Jack Viney of the Demons.\u00a0Getty<\/p>\n

On top of the concern around Viney, Culley left the training field on Friday with an arm injury. The club immediately sent him for scans after the incident.<\/p>\n

Kysaiah Pickett was also absent from Friday’s training session as he was in Alice Springs for a marketing shoot with Northern Territory Tourism. Steven May was also not present as he remains on leave.<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, Geelong star Bailey Smith<\/a> is reportedly set to lose his licence after being clocked driving 125km\/h near his home during the recent bushfires.<\/p>\n

The Cats midfielder was understood to be concerned about his home and animals at the time. However, the latest indiscretion means he will lose his licence for three months.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A Sherrin has yet to be kicked for the first time in the 2026 season, but the Melbourne…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":464747,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[560],"tags":[638,64,63,55,639,85],"class_list":["post-464746","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-afl","tag-afl","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-australian-football-league","tag-australianfootballleague","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/464746","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=464746"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/464746\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/464747"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=464746"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=464746"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=464746"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}