St Kilda coach Brett Ratten says his club will regain key forward Max King and midfielder Zak Jones for their Round 2 clash with Melbourne.
King missed his side’s big road win over GWS with a concussion, while Jones has been working his way back from a hamstring injury.
Ratten said they nearly rolled the dice with Jones, but opted to give him a run around in the reserves.
“It’s probably going to be a drip feed rather than a tidal wave of players coming back. It’ll be King and Jones,” he told SEN’s Whateley.
“Jones was so close, we had two meetings during the week about Jones. It was just a risk and in the end I said ‘Do we need to take this risk? It’s not our Grand Final it’s Round 1’. It’s a long season and we’ve got a lot of injuries.
“We went conservative with Jones and played him in the reserves to just get through and to do it at his own pace and it was all controlled by time and kilometres.
“He got through and played pretty well and did some running afterwards to top him up, so he’ll be back.”
The Saints’ win over the Giants was more impressive given they were missing King, Jones, Rowan Marshall, Paddy Ryder, Dan Hannebery, Brad Crouch and more.
Ratten said they will all return sooner rather than later.
“Then the next wave comes, it’s Hannebery, Marshall’s getting closer and Paddy (Ryder’s) done a fair bit of work and we’re in contact with Paddy pretty much ever day and going through his numbers running wise because he’s got some things he’s ticking off and we’ll get these players back fairly quick I think,” he said.
“It’ll be sort of one or two per week going forward I think.
“(Ryder’s) got some stuff that he’s sending through to our fitness staff and he’s running around 10 and 12km every second day and he’s been in the gym and he’s done a fair bit of work while he’s away.”
The Saints host the Demons at Marvel Stadium on Saturday night.
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