Taylor broke his lower right leg in Hawthorn’s NAB Challenge match two weeks ago and is expected to miss four months of football.
Hawthorn general manager of football operations Mark Evans confirmed that he would be placed on the LTI but said a decision about which rookie to elevate would be made on Tuesday.
As a mature-aged ruckman Skipper is the most logical choice as Taylor’s replacement, but he had injury problems of his own in last week’s game against the Brisbane Lions.
The former Bulldog hyper-extended his knee but Evans said the Hawks would monitor his recovery closely.
“The knee seems to be fine but he only played half a game. We’ll see where he’s at during the course of this week,” Evans told afl.com.au.
Jarryd Roughead (knee) and Garry Moss (ankle) were also in the wars in the loss to the Lions but Evans said both should be fine to play in the round one clash against Melbourne in two weeks.
“Roughy was the one we were all worried about as it happened. He over-extended his knee and went down holding it and the medical staff got him off the ground,” he said.
“They checked him and cleared him to play with about two minutes to go in the half. We decided to wait until half time and when we went in and half time we thought there was no point running the risk of putting him out there in the second half.
“With Franklin suspended for round one the last thing we needed to worry about was whether he was running around or potentially creating some damage. We wrapped him up and 72 hours after the game we are reporting no problems.”
Cyril Rioli has not played at all over the pre-season but Evans said he was a chance to be back within a couple of weeks, as was recruit Shaun Burgoyne.
"Rioli is back and training well. He will press for selection over the next couple of weeks. A call has got to be made on him. Burgoyne will be fine.”
“There have been no setbacks (with Rioli). He was taken out of running duties for a month and he’s been back into it now for a few weeks.”
Brad Sewell will miss the first three weeks of the season with a broken collarbone.
