Dr. Peter Larkins says Tom Stewart would need to make a record recovery from a lisfranc injury to play in a potential Grand Final, but warns it would be “extraordinarily” high risk to do.
Stewart injured his lisfranc ligament during training before Round 22, and has set his sights on playing in the Grand Final, if the Cats were to make it that far.
His fellow defender Mark Blicavs said on Saturday that Stewart was “rehabbing really hard”.
“He’s always set his sights on if we were to make the Grand Final, (so) who knows,” Blicavs told SEN's Crunch Time.
However, Larkins has brought Geelong supporters back to ground, saying the optimism surrounding Stewart isn’t “realistic.”
“There’s nobody that’s played within a six-eight week period (after surgery), and he’s going to be 33 days after his surgery that he’d have to be named by Geelong without playing a game,” he told SEN Afternoons.
“As romantic as that sounds I don’t think it’s realistic.”
Stewart has been a stalwart of the Cats’ backline throughout 2021 and his absence has been has felt during the side's Round 23 and qualifying final losses.
As tempted as Chris Scott may be to pull the trigger on selecting his star defender for the big dance if Geelong can beat Melbourne in the Preliminary Final, the renowned sports doctor offered a word of caution against taking the risk.
“The danger is the particular type of material that’s been used to stabilise all the joints in the middle of his Lisfranc injury will break, so he’ll snap the repair and therefore require revision surgery,” Larkins told SEN's Dwayne's World.
“Once you start doing revision surgeries in the middle of people’s feet… You really start a cascade of problems in the future, so they’ve got to bear that in mind.
“The danger for Tom to play is it won’t be repaired, it will be repairing, so the risk of it breaking again through the middle of his foot is extraordinarily high.”
Geelong lost to Melbourne in Round 23, and will have to reverse the result without Stewart once again if they are to progress to a Grand Final.