Swans' captain enters race against the clock following "devastating" training injury

Phil Davis has sympathised with Callum Mills following the announcement of a hamstring injury just weeks away from a potential Grand Final.

With just 16 days and counting until the 2024 Grand Final, the Swans are sitting pretty with a spot already booked in a Preliminary Final coming off a minor premiership during the home and away season.

The Swans’ captain has had a horror run with injury this year, playing just six games after a shoulder injury during the off season before entering last week’s Qualifying Final against the Giants.

Already ruled out of the Prelim next week, Mills has entered a race against the clock to manage his hamstring in order to push for selection ahead of a potential big dance.

“He’s had a tough year from an injury point of view,” Phil Davis told SEN Whateley.

“We grade hamstring (injuries), one, two and three. If it’s a grade one, which it sounds like it is, generally, you might be able to miss two weeks and play the third.

“So that would mean play on the 21st day, but a lot of the time you actually miss 21 days, so you miss three games and play the fourth.

“The worst thing is that he did it on a Tuesday, so he has cost himself four days.

“There is one more grade in there, they sometimes used to call it a grade half, if you bled through your hamstring, and that can be 10-15 days, so that would immediately rule him out of the Preliminary final, but he would be a chance for the Grand Final.

“The more global principle here is, it’s devastating, his stress level would be enormous.

“Callum has got enough time to work out what he’s doing, they will throw everything at it.”

Davis believes that the nature of the injury, being at training, has the potential to mentally disrupt the Swans’ preparation.

“It is destabilising,” he said.

“It is deflating, like ‘oh gosh we just got Callum back, here we go, oh we’ve lost him’.

“Then you tell yourself ‘Hey, we’ve had a great year without him, we obviously would have loved to have him, but we’ve shown that we can do this, this, this and this, we’ll be okay’.

“They just need a little bit of time to change the language in your head about ramifications of such an incident.”

The Swans will be working overtime to get their skipper back for late September, as the team prepares for their Preliminary Final in the coming weeks.