STAR Sydney midfielder Dan Hannebery has been ruled out of Friday night's crunch clash with Hawthorn but Lance Franklin is expected to return from a bruised heel.

Hannebery, 27, will miss his third successive game with a groin issue. However, Swans football manager Tom Harley said that absence should not last too much longer.

"The short week will go against Dan, unfortunately. He won't play this week," Harley told sydneyswans.com.au.

"We've built the program with the focus on the Fremantle game the following Saturday and Dan's progressing really well through that.

"He's ticking the boxes he needs to at the moment. He's running and he'll build that up at the back end of this week to work his way into skills next week."

Franklin, 31, has also missed the past fortnight. The superstar could revitalise his bid to win a fifth Coleman Medal against his former side.

He has booted 18 goals this year to sit equal-third (with West Coast's Jack Darling), trailing North Melbourne's Ben Brown by six.

"Lance is definitely trending in the right direction. He's done some running. We've got our main training session on Wednesday night, and the expectation is Lance will train and put his hand up to play," Harley said.

Defender Lewis Melican has suffered a setback with his hamstring injury and will miss at least another two weeks.

The 21-year-old was injured in round three.

"He did have a setback in the final stages of his rehab of his hamstring, which he sustained against the Giants a couple of weeks ago," Harley said.

"He's still another couple of weeks away."

Meanwhile, key forward Sam Reid is not feeling pain in the quad he hurt, four weeks after his only match this season against GWS, but Sydney won't rush him back.

"Sam is now halfway through the original prognosis of eight-to-ten weeks. He's four weeks post his surgery," Harley said.

"He doesn't have any pain at the surgical site.

"He's starting to get going again. Sometimes when you don't have any pain, you can ramp things up really quickly.

"We won't be doing that. We'll be respecting the injury and respecting the fact he had surgery, so we're still sticking towards that 8-10 weeks."