Check out the full injury list<\/a><\/p>\nWeddle had played 57 consecutive games since his senior debut and was among the Hawks’ best players this year when the 21-year-old young gun was sidelined with a back injury after the round-17 win over North Melbourne.<\/p>\n
There were initial fears his season was over, but Hawthorn is growing optimistic Weddle is on the verge of a return that would be a significant boost to the Hawks’ September campaign.<\/p>\n
“He’s excited and optimistic. Out of that scan on Monday will come one of two things,” coach Sam Mitchell said on Friday.<\/p>\n
“One, if his back hasn’t quite handled the training loads we’ve put in front of him, in which case he’ll be ruled out.<\/p>\n
“But more optimistically, if he has handled it he’ll be a chance to play some footy in the week or two after that.”<\/p>\n
Weddle will learn his finals fate a day after Hawthorn learns where it will finish in the top eight.<\/p>\n
A massive Gabba clash on Sunday night against reigning premier Brisbane is one of the key round-24 games for shaping the finals matchups.
“We feel like we’ve been playing finals types of games for a long period now, so we’ve put ourselves in a good position,” Mitchell said.<\/p>\n
“I sound very boring and very coach-like, but control the controllables.<\/p>\n
Mitchell is unconcerned Hawthorn has not played at the Gabba since 2019.<\/p>\n
“We think we can play some good footy there,” he said.<\/p>\n
It comes after the Hawks were in front at the last change in big away games over the last few weeks against Fremantle and Adelaide, only to lose.<\/p>\n
“Leading at three-quarter time is not what we’re about, is it?”<\/p>\n
Also on Friday, the Hawks announced veteran forward Jack Gunston will play on next season.<\/p>\n
He has kicked 60 goals this season, a career-best haul, and is coming off a bag of seven last week against Melbourne.<\/p>\n
The 33-year-old, a three-time Hawthorn premiership player, looks set for his second All-Australian selection and his on-field form has been a welcome surprise this year for Hawthorn.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Josh Weddle will go in for assessment on the back injury that looked like ending his season Josh…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":87174,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[560],"tags":[638,64,63,55,639,85,83],"class_list":["post-87173","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\/87173","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=87173"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/87173\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/87174"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=87173"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=87173"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=87173"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}