HAWTHORN midfielder Brad Sewell will return for his team’s crucial match against Adelaide on Friday night.

Sewell was a late withdrawal from last week’s loss to St Kilda with a corked quad. While he will come back into the side, coach Alastair Clarkson says teammate Brent Guerra will still have to wait to return from his shoulder injury.

“Guerra’s shoulder is still a little bit sore. We need to make a decision over the next week or so if he’ll require surgery if he gets that done straight away or get it done at the end of the year,” Clarkson said.

Stuart Dew is another who will miss out this week but Clarkson says he is looking at returning to the senior side after announcing his retirement on Tuesday. Dew and Mark Williams both ran laps at training on Thursday with a view to a return in the coming weeks.

“We’ve missed the quality of those type of players in our front half in the second half of the year. To get both those guys to return to the side will be handy for us but we’ll have to wait and see what sort of training they’ve been able to do leading into the Richmond or Essendon game,” Clarkson said.

The news hasn’t been as good for Jarryd Roughead whose season was ended with knee surgery, and Clarkson said the key forward would be tough to replace.

“It’s pretty difficult to cover a big brute like that in our front half. He’s covered a lot of footy for us and has been very consistent over a long period of time. He’ll be a big loss for us but it’s the nature of the game that you’ll get injuries at some point in time,” he said.

“We’ll have to mix and match down there a bit with a different type of forward structure and see how we go.”

Trent Croad is another whose season has been curtailed by injury but the Hawthorn coach says he holds hope that Croad’s career is not over despite not having played since injuring his foot in last year’s grand final.

“He’s found this period to be particularly tough but we’ll have the surgery over the next little while and hopefully there’s a really good outcome with it,” he said.

“Given the seriousness of the injury and the size of the man and it’s a foot injury there are no guarantees. He’s very optimistic and so is the surgeon that he will return to play AFL footy and we can only hope that will be the case next year.”