Collingwood head coach Craig McRae has thrown a cat amongst the pigeons ahead of the Magpies' Friday night date with Geelong, claiming that injured defender Nathan Murphy may be selected to play.
McRae's revelations come after the Magpies stated on Sunday that Murphy had "suffered a low-grade syndesmosis injury in his right ankle and is expected to miss the next two to three weeks".
However, when speaking via SEN radio waves on Wednesday afternoon, McRae proffered that the Pies' initial diagnosis could well have been premature.
“On Murphy, who was ruled out, he's a chance to play. I don't know how,” McRae told listeners.
“He's got to get through training tomorrow. He was no chance on Sunday and he's some chance now on Tuesday. Time might be against him being a Friday night game, but he's not so much 2-3 weeks (away) now.”
A subsequent statement out of the AIA centre echoed McRae's consensus, with Collingwood's Head of High Performance Jarrod Wade revealing the club's motto regarding injury.
“He looked like he had a decent ankle injury, we got a scan done and that showed some damage there. Those sorts of grade one or grade half syndesmosis injuries can respond really differently, and this is one of those ones as the saying goes ‘we assess the man and not the scan' and that's what we are doing with Murph,” Wade said.
“He's bounced in today, earlier in the week really, really positively. So, he'll be an assess during the week, we'll be expecting that he gets up and does some of training on Wednesday and we've just got to decide whether that level of training is comfortable for us to pick him or not.”
Murphy, 23, is enjoying a breakout season behind the ball, featuring in all but one of Collingwood's 20 home and away fixtures and ranking inside the top 10 for one-percenters across the competition this season.
Though only just notching up his 50th game at the level, Murphy's potential presence will set black and white hearts at ease given the looming task of wrangling Coleman medallists Jeremy Cameron and Tom Hawkins.
The Pies and Cats will do battle before what is expected to be a huge crowd at the MCG on Friday night. The opening bounce for the old-fashioned eight-pointer is scheduled for 7:50pm AEST.
