NORTH Melbourne is hopeful key forward Robbie Tarrant can return from a lingering lower leg injury before the first half of the season is over.

North football director Geoff Walsh told AFL.com.au on Tuesday that Tarrant had been given a short break from the club last week to help him get over the frustrations of his injury, which has dogged him for more than a year.

Tarrant missed nine consecutive games in the first half of last season, when his injury was diagnosed as a nerve-related problem.

He returned to play North's final 10 games of 2013, but struggled to train between matches.

In the mix: round seven

Despite starting the 2014 pre-season on a heavily modified training program, Tarrant's leg injury resurfaced in March, when it was diagnosed as a tibial stress reaction.

At the time, North expected Tarrant would resume running in about two weeks and to miss only the first few weeks of the season.

But Walsh said Tarrant's recovery had been frustratingly slow.

"We've just given him four or five days away to mentally freshen him up and give him a chance to regroup because he's obviously been pretty frustrated, as we have been too," Walsh said.

"We're just hoping that he gets a bit of a mental freshen up more than anything. He was back yesterday so he'll step up his training now.

"But it has lingered on with some shin, hip sort of things, so hopefully he's over the hump there and can start to get some real traction in his training."

Tarrant has been limited to cross-training in recent weeks, but Walsh is hopeful that once he returns to full training he can resume playing fairly quickly.

"We're just hoping that he's over the worst of that now and can at least push into contention before the first half of the year's over, because the year is marching on," Walsh said.

"I wouldn't put a date on [his return]. We want to see him get up and going and get some real impetus into his training.

"Once he does that, he will progress back to readiness to play quite quickly."

Taylor Garner is another Roo yet to play this season, the young forward having injured a hamstring tendon in North's NAB Cup loss to Hawthorn in February.

Walsh said Garner was set to return in the VFL soon, but might be held back until after North Ballarat's bye next weekend.

"He's doing some reasonably high-volume running so we'll see what this week brings," Walsh said.

"We've got a full club bye next week, where both our VFL teams and our AFL team have the bye together.

"Whether the medicos decide that we keep him up and going until that bye and then have him resume after that, we'll know more about that this week."