HAWTHORN will be boosted by the return of emerging midfielder Travis Tuck for Saturday's Anzac Day clash with the West Coast Eagles at Aurora Stadium.
Tuck missed the Hawks' loss to Port Adelaide but football manager Mark Evans said the talented onballer would be a welcome return against an Eagles side chock-full of confidence after downing the Western Bulldogs.
"Travis has had terrific form across the pre-season and in the early couple of matches, so he's fit and raring to go after his hip corkie," Evans said.
Tuck missed the Hawks' loss to Port Adelaide but football manager Mark Evans said the talented onballer would be a welcome return against an Eagles side chock-full of confidence after downing the Western Bulldogs.
"Travis has had terrific form across the pre-season and in the early couple of matches, so he's fit and raring to go after his hip corkie," Evans said.
Tuck comes into the side for the injured Brent Guerra (hamstring), who is likely to miss at least three matches.
Evans admitted it had been a difficult start to the season for the reigning premiers but said the Hawks were just enduring “one of those runs”.
However he said the club could adopt the ‘every cloud has a silver lining’ approach, with other players filling the breach and looking more than capable in the absence of missing premiership stars.
“There’s been a bit of curse with our defenders at the minute, but the good thing with that is we think we’ve found a couple of players who can play in that position,” he said of Guerra’s omission.
“At various stages [Brendan] Whitecross has looked pretty good, at various stages [Jarryd] Morton and [Clinton] Young have played back there and looked okay as well.
“So from that point of view, necessity’s been the mother of invention and a couple of things fall your way out of that.”
Full-back Stephen Gilham is at least another week away, however, as he battles to recover from soreness in his left knee.
Despite training on Tuesday, Evans said Hawthorn could not consider its key stopper.
“It’s a bit like [after] the game that he played; it allowed him to go and play and perform pretty well, but just afterwards there’s been a bit of swelling that we need to allow to subside,” he said.
“We don’t really want to bring him back in and then lose him again, so we need to make sure that he’s right to go before we bring him back in.”
Evans said the Hawks needed to “respect” the injury in the short term but ruled out Gilham needing surgery to repair any damage.
“We’ve actually checked that across the last few weeks and they’re quite confident that the bone bruising has healed pretty well but maybe he’s just stirred up the joint capsule a little bit,” he said.
“Those sorts of things usually settle quickly.”
In other injury news, the Hawks rate Michael Osborne (hamstring) a chance to play next week while Grant Birchall (broken thumb) could resume in a fortnight.
Evans said it was tough to predict when Xavier Ellis (foot) might return but said the classy defender had completed a running session this week.
