HAWTHORN defender Trent Croad could make his return from a serious foot injury as soon as round one of the 2009 premiership season.

Croad played with an injured foot for the 2008 finals series before breaking it in the grand final victory over Geelong.

But Hawthorn general manager of football operations Mark Evans said the Hawks were not putting a time frame on Croad’s recovery.

“At this stage we can’t predict how quickly he will come back. We really need to see how he goes when he gets into the striding and serious running components in January and February before we get an accurate prediction of that,” Evans said.

“If all things were to go well for him, he would be available for the start of the season.”

Croad had experienced a complication with his foot last week when the entry wound from the operation needed to be restitched after failing to heal.

Evans said the setback was only minor and wouldn’t delay the 28-year-old’s return to football.

“It’s more to do with the skin on the top of the foot as opposed to the actual injury on the bone of the foot,” he said.

“It won’t affect anything at all. We said right from day one that this will be a slow healing injury. Trent is now walking around and putting weight on it. While he is ahead with that, we have to respect the fact that he is going to be slow throughout the course of January and February.”

Another Hawk premiership hero, Luke Hodge will spend much of the summer in recovery mode with Croad after injuring his shoulder at training.

Hodge had an operation on Monday to a minor tear in his shoulder cartilage.

Evans said Hodge would be on a modified training program and the Hawks would not risk him in the NAB Cup.

“He’s had that re-stitched and is doing non-contact work. He can still do all the running and he can very quickly join back in the ball drills but he won’t do any contact through January or February,” he said

“We won’t be rushing him into the NAB Cup. Our projection is that he would work himself up to the start of the season so maybe in the last couple of weeks of the pre-season you might see him.”