Wellingham set to miss season opener

SIDELINED: Eagle Sharrod Wellingham is likely to miss the start of the season after suffering an ankle injury while bouncing on a trampoline. Picture: Daniel Wilkins Source: PerthNow

WEST Coast recruit Sharrod Wellingham could miss the opening two rounds of the AFL season, with surgeons electing to leave his injured ankle in its moon-boot casing for longer than expected.

Wellingham, recruited from Collingwood in an active trade period by the Eagles last year to add run to the midfield, sprained his ankle last month while jumping on a trampoline.

Eagles coach John Worsfold, speaking this morning at the club's season launch at Crown, said the injury had taken longer than expected to heal.

"Yeah, well, you can see he's still in a boot," Worsfold said.

"It's like a normal sprained ankle. The surgeon saw him on the weekend at our game and elected to leave the boot on for a longer period.

"So, straight away, that's making it pretty tough and means he won't have put any weight on that leg for about three weeks.

"You would expect it would take another three weeks or so to really get him up and going, back ready to play.

"That, at a guess, would take Round 1 and maybe Round 2 out of the equation, but it's hard to predict from here about what his program will be."

Worsfold said Wellingham was likely disappointed with the nature of the injury, having not hurt the ankle in a game or training scenario.

"I think he's hurting because of how it happened," he said.

"You hurt if you get injured on the field - you're always disappointed to know you're going to miss games - and can that be magnified if it's something that's happened off the field?

"I'm sure there's some regret or a fair bit of regret that it didn't happen around the high-risk sport that (he) plays."

West Coast travels to the Northern Territory this week to take on Port Adelaide on Saturday in the club's final pre-season hitout, before the season-opening derby later this month.

Worsfold said the squad's depth would be tested early, with the likes of Nic Naitanui (groin surgery), Andrew Embley (hamstring) and Mark Nicoski (hamstring) adding to Wellingham's absence.

However, the Eagles will this week welcome back Beau Waters and Adam Selwood, while small forward Mark LeCras will continue his strong return from last year's ACL injury.

"You would like to have your best 22 out there every week, but that's very rare," Worsfold said.

"We're happy with the squad that we've got and we're confident that we'll put a great team on the field.

"(Embley is) good, it's not a bad hamstring.

"Take into account that he's a little bit older, we'll always give him a bit more leeway. But with this sort of hamstring, I think he would have been available next week, if we had a game."
 

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