North Melbourne midfielder Ed Lower will miss between 6 and 8 weeks after sustaining a fractured fibula in last Saturday’s NAB Challenge win over Hawthorn in Ballarat.

The 22 year-old will return home to Adelaide for several days before embarking on an intensive rehabilitation program.

“I’m hoping to be back playing as soon as possible,” Lower told kangaroos.com.au.

“If I do everything that’s required, I should be right for a return close to or just after round 2.”

“I’ll stay with my parents until next week because while I’m in a moon-boot, there’s not much else I can do.”

“Once I get out of the moon-boot in 4 weeks time, we can really ramp up the rehabilitation process with circuit training and some swimming.”

“I was tackling a Hawthorn player and as I swung around my lower leg collided with someone’s knee. It just felt like I got kicked in the ankle but then it got progressively worse of the next few minutes and then I knew something was wrong.

“Doctor Con narrowed it down to a few scenarios and I was supposed to go straight to the Epworth Hospital for scans but we couldn’t get through to the city from Ballarat due to the storms. I basically had to wait until the Sunday to find out that there was a fracture there.”

“I’ve never broken anything in footy before so it’s pretty frustrating for me because I was planning to have a pretty big year and everything was going so well up until this point.”

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