IT'S NOT often a player leaves a recovery session worse off than when he arrived.

For young Bulldog Jarrad Grant, that's exactly what happened last Friday morning when he encountered a stingray in the shallows at Port Melbourne.

Grant was doing a light beach recovery with senior player Daniel Giansiracusa and fellow pups Jarrad Boumann, Sam Reid, Guy O'Keefe and Callan Ward, when he stood directly on the dangerous marine creature.

He likened the sensation to standing on "mud", but realised it was much more serious than that when the group saw the ray swim away.

"I was about five metres off shore, coming in, and I was behind Guy O'Keefe," Grant told westernbulldogs.com.au.

"It missed him and I trod on it, and it obviously wasn't very happy about this, and it whipped the tail around and got me on the foot.

"I thought it was crab, because it wasn't too bad at the time.

"I had some tape on my foot, so we took the tape off to assess the bleeding, and it was only a little puncture.

"It was then we realised it wasn't a crab, and possibly a stingray. About 10 minutes later, I started feeling a bit weird in the head.

"My legs started to twitch and I was struggling a bit.

"It was a bit nerve-racking, with Steve Irwin and what happened to him. I was pretty quick to ask some questions of the ambulance officers and they reassured me I was going to be fine."

Grant spent the weekend on crutches, after being instructed to keep the weight off the injured foot. The wound, which measures about an inch in length but didn't require stitches, resembles a deep cut along the inside of his left heel.

Having embarked on his first run five days after the incident, the 18-year-old deemed himself fit enough to train with the group on Thursday morning at Whitten Oval.

He's also confident there's enough time left in the pre-season to put his hand up for another senior opportunity, after being so close last weekend.

"I suppose I've got to train well for the rest of this week and just show that my foot's fine," he said.

"Hopefully I'll get a run with Willy [Williamstown] this week."

Grant's freak accident last Friday came with a number of coincidences, given his former team was the Dandenong Stingrays and it was the late Steve Irwin's birthday.

Not content to flirt with any other possible flukes, the emerging forward, who is now known to his teammates as "Stinger", believes he's finished with beach recovery sessions – for now, anyway.

"It was pretty coincidental, all those things happening. It made a bit of a story for the news people," he said.

"But we've got a Port Melbourne recovery next Saturday and I've already told our team manager I'm unavailable for that one."