Richmond General Manager of Football Neil Balme has provided injury updates on a few of his wounded Tigers, with the club currently experiencing a harrowing run of bad injury luck.
Captain Trent Cotchin has been ruled out of tonight’s clash with Adelaide after suffering a hamstring injury.
Given he’s missed seven weeks with the same injury already this year, Tigers fans would be quite worried, but Balme doesn’t believe it’s anything serious.
“It’s the same leg, but it’s not the same injury and in all truth if he hadn’t have had the hammy before, he probably would’ve taken a few anti-inflammatory tablets and wouldn’t have had a problem,” he told SEN’s KB & the Doc.
“We’re a bit concerned that if he did the hammy again, it would break our hearts so we’ve taken the conservative view and given him the week off.”
Ivan Soldo is another player out of the Adelaide game and Balme has broken down what’s happened with the ruckman.
“He’s been pretty crook for a couple of days. We thought he’d be okay, but he’s just struggling a bit with an illness,” he said.
“Nothing untoward, he’s just a bit crook.
“Mabior Chol’s flown over and we’ve thought let’s have a go and play him rather than put Soldo through the problem of having to play crook.”
Richmond goes into the bye next week and could get rebounding defender Jayden Short back from an elbow injury soon after.
“Short’s running, he’s got almost full extension of his arm, he had that elbow problem, so it just depends on how much running and work he can do,” Balme said.
“He’ll be back – I won’t say immediately after the bye – it won’t be far after that.”
Next up is Jack Riewoldt who is recovering from a PCL injury and Balme said the vice-captain is on track.
“The injury that’s kept him out has been the knee problem. We said he’d miss six to eight and that’s what he’s going to miss I think,” he said.
“He’s going pretty well now. He’s running and he should be fine, it’s just a matter of getting enough work into him to make sure he can handle playing.”
Finally, Alex Rance went down with an ACL injury in Round 1 and while there has been talk about him playing this year, Balme said it’s very unlikely.
“He’s a long-term player for us and we certainly wouldn’t take any risks trying to get him back too early,” he said.
“I can remember my time back in the old days when David Schwarz was playing in my team and we wished we’d taken more time with him so I don’t think we’re going to make that mistake again.
“We’re not giving any genuine consideration to him playing this year, but if it’s possible, obviously we’d think about it.”
