Richmond’s Physical Performance Manager Peter Burge provides ‘Roar Vision’ with an update on the injury status of several members of the Tigers’ playing group.
Jack Riewoldt, concussion
“Jack’s concussion occurred very early in the game, obviously. He actually felt pretty good at half-time, but the ‘doc’ ruled him out of the game with the concussion protocols these days . . . He’s feeling good today, and he’s a probable for this week. He’ll train tomorrow, train Thursday, and really he’s just got to tick a few little boxes with the doc in terms of concussion testing, which we expect will go well . . . But we’ll know more on Thursday.”
Bachar Houli, groin strain
“Bachar felt a little bit of a pop in his groin after a long kick to Dan Butler (v St Kilda last Saturday). We tried some things to get him back out there, but he wasn’t right. So, it’s probably going to be a medium-term injury . . . It’s disappointing, but we’ll start his ‘rehab’ phase this week and get him up and running and fit for post-bye.”
Dylan Grimes, back soreness
“’Grimesy’ actually trained in our main session last week. He copped a whack in his back a few weeks ago, I think it was against Brisbane. It was bruised, but he played with it for a couple of weeks. It had improved, but he copped another knock against West Coast (Round 9) . . . It was okay last week, probably wasn’t 100 percent, so we just took the approach to play it a bit safe and give him a break . . . He’ll hopefully be back this week, providing he gets through full training.”
Anthony Miles, back soreness
“’Milesy’ is very similar (to Grimes). He’s had some back soreness for a couple of weeks now. He’s been playing great footy through the VFL and getting heavily tagged at times. He just was a little bit sore during training (last week), so, again, we just took a safe approach with him. We want to get him up and about for this week . . .”
Shai Bolton, corked quad
“Shai got a ‘corky’ against Sandringham at Holm Park last week, on top of a corky the week before, which was quite sore. He got up to training the week leading into the Sandringham game and got another whack on it in the second quarter. So we just decided to give him a week off, get it settled, get a full week of training this week and hopefully play on the weekend.”
Jason Castagna, knee soreness
“Jase has knee injury, which is fairly minor. He hyperextended his knee against North Melbourne (Round 8), but got himself up to play against West Coast and was quite good. He just pulled up a little bit sore from the West Coast game, so we decided that we needed to give him a week off and make sure we get this right for the rest of the season. He hasn’t run yet, but he’s due to run tomorrow (Tuesday). So we anticipate that he’ll run tomorrow and, potentially, train Thursday. So right now he’s 50-50, but we’ll just see how that pans out.”
Dion Prestia, calf complaint
“Dion’s injury, initially, we thought was sort of more on the minor end and it would only be a week or so. It took a little bit longer to settle down, as to where we thought it would. He started running a week and a half ago and did a good week of conditioning last week. He’s just at that point now where we can’t quite progress back into skills. We’re in a bit of a holding pattern with him. We want to make sure we get it right, so we’ll get a little bit of a short preparation in, and then we’ll resume skills, hopefully in the next couple of weeks. But it’s probably more a medium-term injury than a short-term injury now. We’ve had to revise our time-line a bit, but given Dion’s pre-season, and some of the interruptions he’s had, we want to make absolutely sure he’s right for the second half of the year. So we are being cautious . . .”
Daniel Rioli
“Really pleased with his progress. He played 79 minutes on the weekend (in the VFL), which is about three-quarters of the game. He’s obviously had the limited preparation, but the last two months he’s been training at high intensity and now he’s playing footy. So he’ll progress to a full game this week, and we’ll see where that takes us.”