Premiership star Mark Hutchings is on the brink of a return to football after hitting all of the key benchmarks in his recovery from a knee injury.

A key member of the successful 2018 campaign, Hutchings needs to complete his training program this week and if he clears that final hurdle will play restricted minutes for the WAFL Eagles against Swan Districts on Saturday.

It is good news, too, for exciting pressure forward Jarrod Cameron who has also met all targets as set down by the club’s strength and conditioning staff and with a clean run at training this week will also play against his club of origin on Saturday.

Another premiership star, midfielder Elliot Yeo, is also making strong progress and is advancing towards a program that will see him return to action.

Utility player Brendon Ah Chee and young defender Ben Johnson are also set to resume.

The club is still assessing the time frames for the return of games record holder Shannon Hurn, who last week equalled the 290-game tally of champion ruckman Dean Cox, but suffered a soleus strain in the opening minutes.

And the hamstring surgery went according to plan for skipper Luke Shuey.

“Unfortunately Shannon suffered a soleus injury early in the game and wasn’t able to continue which was a big hit for the team,” General Manager, Football Craig Vozzo said today.

“That type of injury is normally a couple of weeks. We don’t have an exact time frame just yet, it will be symptom based, but it is normally somewhere between two and three weeks.

“Luke had tendon surgery repair last week. That all went well we will take a gentle approach. He will be off legs for the next two or three weeks and then we will build him into play.

“We don’t have any time frames, but as suggested last week it will probably be sometime after the bye.

“Yeoy has turned the corner. Our strength and conditioning guys are setting up a return-to-play program for him which we will settle in on in the next week. He has elevated his training and you will see him on the track more and more.

 “Brendon has had a niggling hamstring injury which he suffered just before the Port game. He signed off on that on the weekend and all being well, if he gets through training this week as we expect, he will be available to play.

“Camo and Hutch are progressing well and have completed the block of training required by our strength and conditioning staff to be ready to play; assuming they get through training they will be both available for WAFL minutes this week.

Injury list