The longer-term good news is that ruckman Brad Ottens’s knee is still improving, albeit slowly.
Ablett rolled an ankle in Geelong’s 64-point win over Essendon at Docklands on Sunday, while Chapman has missed just one game due to a compound dislocated finger and Stokes was also suspended for a week.
But skipper Tom Harley will miss two to three weeks with a hamstring injury suffered on Sunday.
Ottens is, yet again, listed as three to four weeks away from playing with his posterior cruciate injury but Geelong’s football operations manager Neil Balme said the 29-year-old was progressing well.
“He’ll be a little while, but there’s no rush on him,” Balme told geelongcats.com.au. “We’ll just see what he’s doing, but he’s certainly getting better.
“He’s doing a bit more work – it’s just a bit slow coming good, that knee. He’s on the bike, so that’s OK.”
Joel Corey is struggling with plantar fasciitis, a foot condition which St Kilda champion Robert Harvey once famously solved by jumping off a chair onto a concrete floor until he snapped the offending band of tissue that runs from the heel along the arch of the foot, thus enabling him to play again.
Balme said he had spoken to Corey about the Harvey method, but said the midfielder had seemed underwhelmed by the suggestion.
“No, it certainly hasn’t snapped – as we said at the start it’s not particularly bad. I did ask him about that, and he looked at me a little bit askance, so I think he’s probably not considering it,” Balme said with a laugh.
Geelong elevated 19-year-old rookie defender Jeremy Laidler last week on the back of good VFL performances, while young forward Simon Hogan is also catching the eye, gathering 28 touches in the VFL last weekend.
“When we elevate someone, obviously we’re thinking of him, but it doesn’t necessarily mean he’ll get a game. He’s just got to push his way though, but we’ll certainly consider him,” Balme said.
“The reason we did elevate him is because he was considered more over the last few weeks as an emergency, but we weren’t able to put him in as an emergency because he wasn’t eligible.
“In the end we elevated him for that reason, so I wouldn’t read into it that he’s definitely going to play, but we’ll certainly take him into account.
“We’re really pleased with Simon – he’s now played pretty well the last couple of weeks in the VFL so we’d certainly be keen to play him.
“But it’s a matter of opportunity for all those blokes.”
