THE West Coast Eagles have been buoyed by the news that gun midfielder Daniel Kerr is almost certain to play in this week’s season opener against the Brisbane Lions.

Kerr tore his hamstring in the final intra-club match before the first round of the NAB Cup yet he has improved steadily over the last month.

Assistant coach Peter Sumich wouldn’t guarantee that the Brownlow medal runner-up would definitely play on Saturday night against the Lions – an impossibility given the match is not for the best part of a week – but he went as close as he could.

“One hundred per cent sure? If [Kerr] gets through the week [he will play],” Sumich said.

“Look, it depends on tonight and of course Wednesday – if he gets through those sessions, yeah, he’ll play. All signs are telling us he’s right to play, barring anything happening in the next two or three sessions.”

Sumich said Kerr could have played already, and probably would have played if the game on tomorrow.

“Probably, yeah. But then we would have tested him out on Friday, so then it’s a hard question to answer,” he said. “But we would have tested him and really upped it on Friday, and he would have gone close.

“Put it this way: if it was a final last weekend, we would have pushed him through last week to test him and, more than likely, he would have played.”

Kerr is a consistently fast starter. While Chris Judd stood between him and three Brownlow votes in last season’s cracking opener in Sydney, the two previous seasons against Adelaide and St Kilda delivered maximum votes for the nuggety superstar.

But Sumich admitted the hamstring injury had shaken the 24-year-old.

“I think he’s held himself back,” Sumich said. “Last week he could have probably trained a bit more, but he’s probably more cautious than the doctors with this, because I don’t think he’s ever done one, and that’s hard for the kid, because it plays on your mind a little bit.

“But all the scans and everything show that it’s ready to go.”