Injured Western Bulldogs ruckman Jordan Roughead is winning his battle to recover from an eye injury and play in Saturday's AFL grand final against Sydney.
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Roughead's vision has fully returned following the nasty injury he suffered in the preliminary final win over Greater Western Sydney.
But Western Bulldogs assistant coach Steven King, who was involved in Geelong’s 2007 drought-breaking premiership, said he will still need to pass a fitness test when the Dogs have their main training session on Thursday to prove himself fit for the grand final against the Swans.
King said the news continued to be positive for the 25-year-old ruckman, who could not see for much of Saturday night following a freak accident where he copped a football to the eye at close-range in Saturday night’s preliminary final.
Roughead was at the club on Tuesday reviewing the six-point victory and had made steady progress which gave Roughead and the doctors alike a positive indication he is on track for Saturday.
“He’s going well. He was in today, we’ve been through all the edits with him and he did the review process with the group so he’s feeling a lot better,” King said.
“He’s really optimistic, the specialist is optimistic that he’ll recover well and we’ve just got to make sure he can train and the process from there is that it doesn’t bleed again – but he’s really positive about it. We’ll wait until the main session on Thursday and just give him every chance to make sure he recovers.”
Following the positive progression the only remaining box for Roughead to tick is his eye withstanding a solid hit-out on Thursday - King said he would be put through his paces to assess how it holds up.
“Just for him to recover and make sure the bleeding stops and he doesn’t re-aggravate it. The visions back, he’s feeling really good. It’s just for the specialist to make sure by the time he runs around and gets his heart rate up … that the eye (is fine and) he doesn’t have a re-bleed.”
Similar can be said for former Hawthorn premiership player Matt Suckling, who will also draw plenty of attention at the main training session as he makes his bid to play against Sydney.