Max Bailey is the only injured Hawk and the prospect of a near-full list excites football manager Mark Evans.
“I’ve never seen an injury list at Hawthorn that has one player on it,” Evans said. “That is an outstanding position to be in and certainly a long way from where we were at the start of this year and all of last year.
“In terms of player availability the next best we’ve had was way back at the start of 2005 when we started the season with maybe four or five players who were unavailable.
“To get it down to a single person at this stage of the year is quite extraordinary.
“It’s good management by our medical team and the players who have been in that group. We’ve certainly had injuries to manage across the course of the year and for them to get the likes of Josh Gibson, Rhan Hooper, Campbell Brown, Shaun Burgoyne and Clinton Young up and running - and remain available - despite their restrictions across the summer is a great effort.”
Bailey is striving to make the injury list go from one to none as he enters the final stages of his rehabilitation from a third knee reconstruction.
With just five rounds left, the lanky ruckman is fighting against the clock to play in 2010 with Evans also admitting the club was leaning toward saving him for a full-on assault on 2011.
“We’ll allow him to keep going in his build-up to playing, but if he’s going to run out of time we certainly won’t be pushing him out there early,” Evans said.
“The program for the moment is for him to just keep working away at it and we’ll make a call as he progresses through.
“The Hawthorn and Box Hill sides will hopefully go for a bit more than the five weeks so we’ve got a bit of time. There’s no great rush.”
Hooper is the latest player to regain full health, but the goalsneak is more likely to feature in the VFL in his comeback game from a hamstring injury suffered in round 10.
Simon Taylor continues to push his case for senior selection having proved he is over the leg break that has cruelled his season.
“He’s had three games at VFL level. Now it comes down to when he’s got the right level of form to put pressure on the rucks that are in the side,” Evans said.
“His first game was more about getting some minutes of competitive football into him, the second was more load management, but he played without restriction for the first time last week and performed pretty well.
“He’s right to go once his form pushes him into senior consideration.”
