Hawthorn recruit Jaeger O'Meara is optimistic his troublesome knee will hold up for his debut season at the Hawks after two impressive outings in the JLT Community Series.
The former Gold Coast midfielder missed all of the past two seasons battling serious knee injuries but has started his career at Hawthorn in strong form.
He racked up 22 disposals, seven clearances and kicked a clever goal in the Hawk's pre-season loss to North Melbourne on Sunday to further press his claims to be ready for the club's round one clash with Essendon.
Read: Match report: North Melbourne vs Hawthorn
The 23-year-old said he was hopeful of playing in the Hawks' final pre-season hit-out and that he had faith in his body.
"It felt good, obviously it was my second hit-out so I blew out some more cobwebs. It's good to get some consistency and play two games in a row. I am confident in the knee," he told Fairfax Media.
"Obviously I haven't played too much footy in the past couple of years so it's nice to play a full game out and play two in a row.
"I was confident I would be playing footy pretty quickly but I'm just taking it as it comes and pleasingly everything is going really well at the moment. This is just how I am. This is my body. I have had a knee injury and I will continue to look after that and see how it goes but I'm confident I will play consistent footy this year."
Read: Hawthorn's JLT2 Weekend wrap
The Hawks say O'Meara's progress has gone according to their plan after recruiting him during last year's trade period, and assistant coach Cameron Bruce said the NAB AFL Rising Star winner was on track for his brown and gold debut.
"He's performing well throughout the games and throughout the week. It's a credit to the fitness staff and the conditioning staff to get him into a condition where he's really confident with his body and confident that he can get through solid hit-outs," Bruce said after Sunday's clash.
"We'll just continue with that path, we've put a path in place that we want Jaeger to stay on over this period up until round one and hopefully that will see that he's ready to go."
