STAR Melbourne forward Tayla Harris will consult with an ophthalmologist in order to be cleared to face St Kilda on Saturday.<\/p>\n
Harris managed to accidentally poke herself in her right eye during a marking attempt just before half-time of Melbourne’s 48-point win over the Western Bulldogs and was taken to hospital.<\/p>\n
She has been cleared of serious damage, and as of Monday, is confident she’ll be given the tick of approval, but needs a final check-up.<\/p>\n
Harris arrived at Melbourne training at Casey Fields in style on Monday, catching a lift with a helicopter from Essendon airport to pump up Melbourne’s round two game.<\/p>\n
The first 5000 attendees to the match against St Kilda will be entered into a competition to win $10,000. Post-match, a chopper will drop 5000 balls onto the oval, and the closest to the pin wins the cash.<\/p>\n
“The first thing I said (at hospital was), ‘I’ve got something on Monday morning that I would like to do,’ and the doctor said, ‘You’re all sweet to go up in the helicopter’,” Harris told reporters at a brisk Casey Fields at 8am on Monday morning.\u00a0<\/p>\n
“Obviously anything to do with the eye region, you need to be really careful with. I’ve got these two eyes for a lifetime, so I want to take care of them. I had to go to the hospital just to get some expert opinion and, yeah, all good from that point of view.\u00a0<\/p>\n
“I’ll get an appointment with the specialist ASAP, and just clear off anything else and then make a plan moving forward. I’m feeling good, obviously (and) thankfully avoided anything major, but, yeah, not ideal to poke yourself in the eye, I don’t recommend it.<\/p>\n
“I just had some eye drops that help speed up the healing process, and there’s obviously a little bit of damage in the eyeball. So just, yeah, taking care of that is the first priority, which I’m doing.<\/p>\n
“Mum and Dad were down this weekend (from Queensland), so they looked after me \u2013 not that I needed anything in particular \u2013 but they were just kind of laughing at the way my eyeballs were changing shape a little bit.\u00a0<\/p>\n
“I’ll do whatever I’m told \u2013 as long as I can play, I’ll be wearing whatever’s needed. I’ll wear a helmet and a ski mask if I need.”<\/p>\n
The ball drop and prize money is a club-driven initiative to give fans extra incentive to get down to the game, where the in-form Demons will be taking on a Saints side fresh off a surprise victory over Adelaide.<\/p>\n
“It was the world’s record trip to Casey today from the north side of Melbourne, where I live, so I was stoked to be able to get up in the chopper and it was so much fun. Obviously it’s not often you get to go in a helicopter, so I’m very thankful to get to do it,” Harris said.<\/p>\n
“We’re hoping to pack out Casey Fields, 7,000 is the goal, which is ambitious and we know we’ll be able to achieve that. We love our Casey community out here.\u00a0<\/p>\n
“No matter where you’re coming from, we’d love to see you on Saturday and yeah, you could win 10 grand, so why not?<\/p>\n
“Obviously, the spectacle is the game. Round one, we had DJs and pyrotechnics \u2013 I think it’s always fun for the entertainment factor to have fans come out and have a little bit more than just the footy.<\/p>\n
“We’ve got (entertainment) at quarter-time breaks and half-time breaks, but before and after the game, the excitement isn’t quite there just yet, so while you’re waiting, you may as well have some extra excitement for your Saturday.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"STAR Melbourne forward Tayla Harris will consult with an ophthalmologist in order to be cleared to face St…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":76397,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[560],"tags":[638,64,63,55,639,85,83],"class_list":["post-76396","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","tag-text"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/76396","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=76396"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/76396\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/76397"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=76396"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=76396"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=76396"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}