AFL 2024: Will Day closes in on early season Hawthorn return

Hawthorn star Will Day has a return date in mind but another key defender has joined a dramatic injury streak at Waverley Park.

The Hawks hope Peter Crimmins medallist Will Day could be available for round 4 as he recovers from a foot stress fracture. Picture: Michael Willson / Getty Images

Hawthorn says reigning best and fairest Will Day has taken “a significant step forward” in his recovery, but the club’s backline injury toll has mounted further with a father-son pick hurt at training.

Key defender Will McCabe, the son of 138-game Hawthorn defender Luke McCabe, will miss at least three months after scans revealed a bone stress reaction in his lower back.

The 197cm teenager will move into a “non-weight bearing” training program as he is cautiously eased back into football, ruling out any prospect of a senior debut amid Hawthorn’s key defensive personnel woes.

With James Blanck sidelined for the season with an ACL injury and Denver Grainger-Barras out for three months following surgery on his toe, Hawthorn’s options to hold down the key posts are limited to captain James Sicily, veteran Sam Frost and SSP recruit Ethan Phillips.

Hawthorn’s No. 19 pick Will McCabe is out for at least three months with a stress reaction in his lower back. Picture: Brad Fleet

The spate of injuries are set to put a strain on Sicily’s important rebounding role for the Hawks and could detonate coach Sam Mitchell’s plan to use Blake Hardwick as a forward in 2024.

More positively for the Hawks, star midfielder Day has ditched his moon boot and is targeting a return in April as he recovers from a stress fracture in his foot.

Hawthorn high performance boss Peter Burge said the progress was “fantastic news” for the 22-year-old.

“Following some scans on Wednesday, Will has been able to get out of his moon boot and he can resume body weight walking,” Burge said.

“He will now have a staged progression with his rehab program, this will be walking initially, then Alter-G running and then land-based running.

Hawthorn star Will Day has shed his moon boot and is working towards an early-season return after suffering a foot stress fracture in the pre-season. Picture: Michael Klein

“That timeline will still be reasonable, but the plan is still the earlier portion of the season looking to return to play.”

Burge said Changkuoth Jiath’s hamstring injury suffered during last week’s intraclub match was not connected to the achilles and calf issues that plagued him during 2023.

“He plays at an intensity which is as high as anyone … unfortunately he had an incident where he was running at speed and went to change pace and injured his hamstring in that action,” Burge said.

“He has started low-level jogging again, he’s moving, he’s active, which is a positive.

“The great thing is that he had a really good preparation pre-Christmas and post-Christmas, so he’s got that training history there.

“It’s a little bump in the road for us, but we’ll get him playing football as soon as we can.”

Burge said Grainger-Barras’ injury, where he hyper-extended his toe after standing on another player’s foot, was “tricky” but would be fixed with surgery, which he underwent on Monday.

He said Bailey MacDonald (bone stress) had began running again while Seamus Mitchell (jaw) was back in non-contact training, with Chad Wingard (achilles) working at “90 per cent of his maximum speed” with a return to training potentially within a month.

Originally published as AFL 2024: Will Day closes in on early season Hawthorn return