Hawthorn speedster Changkuoth Jiath could come into consideration for Friday's Opening Round clash against Sydney.
Jiath has battled persistent injuries over the past few seasons, and more recently, his hip.
However, Hawks high-performance manager Peter Burge has provided some positive news on the winger, saying he could be
"Just going back two weeks on one of our main trainings, he just had a bit of hip irritation which was just impacting his kicking and top-end speed," Burge said.
So we've just had to back off for the last week. He actually fully trained last week and we thought we were in a position where he was going to play some game time but he just flagged that he was still not 100 per cent comfortable with that, so we just took the opportunity to take another week.
"He fully trained today and given we've got another main training session on Wednesday, I'd expect he'd be playing game time at the end of this week."
Key forward Calsher Dear is also making progress on his serious back issue, after recently hitting the 12-week mark on his injury.
Burge says that Dear is due for another scan, but is "tracking well at this stage" of his recovery.
"So we've got him back doing sprint drills, we've got him back doing straight-line running at a very controlled pace and the goal is, based on the next scan, to progress his conditioning and how much conditioning we can do and then lateral movement," Burge said.
"We're expecting it (the scan) to be more in the positive, but then the progression after that is about how long do we take to get back into football training and obviously playing.
"It's still very difficult to put an exact timeline but it's progressing the way we wanted it to."
Talls Mitch Lewis and James Blanck are also making inroads in their respective recoveries from anterior cruciate ligament (ACL) tears.
Blanck will need another two months on the sidelines before he returns through Box Hill while Lewis is aiming for a mid-season return.
As for small forward Sam Butler, Burge says he is in a "holding pattern" following his shocking leg break during the 2024 campaign.
Butler had made some progress in the pre-season but has plateaued in recent times.
