JORDAN Lewis has spent the past few days locked away with teammates Xavier Ellis, Luke Breust, Beau Muston and Riley Milne, coming up with ideas for this week’s assignment.

But the discussions have nothing to do with this week’s match against West Coast, rather the university project that the group has to hand in.

The five Hawks are studying Commerce at Deakin University and have been working together on a case study.

Lewis says he is enjoying working with his teammates on something other than football and says it can be used as a form of team bonding.

“I think that especially for the young guys coming into the club, to get that experience with an older player, they can feel more comfortable talking to us because we hang around in a different environment,” Lewis said.

“They can come to the club and feel comfortable and it is a great environment for those kids.”

Lewis has only just started the course but said it has brought some healthy balance to his football-dominated life.

“It’s good to have something away from football to channel some attention to. A lot of guys do university and a lot do some workplace stuff as well,” he said.

“Teams these days are pushing players hard to take on outside interests. The average career is about two years. Your career can finish through injury or form so you have to prepare for life after that.”

Lewis may be looking after matters off field but his main interest is still very much on the field, where he returned last week after an off-season shoulder reconstruction.

He had 24 touches in the loss to Port Adelaide and was one of his side’s best. But he says he still has a way to go before reaching full match fitness.

“I still need a couple more games. It was the first game I’ve played since the grand final so I haven’t played footy for a good six months. It’s definitely going to take a while to get the run back into my legs and feel comfortable out there again,” he said.

Lewis is not accustomed to long injury lay-offs as his only other time under the knife was ankle surgery when he was 16 years old.

He admits it was frustrating not being able to join the main group over pre-season.

“I pride myself on being able to get out there on the track on a consistent basis. For the first three or four years I was able to do that and you go into games more confident,” he said.

“This year I had a restricted lead-up and you’ve got to deal with those things, you can’t really look back and you have to do the best you can.”

Lewis had plenty of company on the sidelines as Hawthorn’s injury list grows but says that is not the main reason for their 1-3 record.

“There’s more to it than that. Having the guys out doesn’t help a lot but all the sides have got injuries,” he said.

“In terms of our game we haven’t played the way we’ve wanted to play. We’re going back to 2005 when we were playing the footy we didn’t want to play. We’ve been there and done that and we know what we need to do to get back playing our best football and hopefully that is this week.”