We may not see Joe Daniher until the back half of the 2020 season.
Speaking on SEN Breakfast on Wednesday, Bombers general manager of football Dan Richardson conceded that the star forward does not have a precise timeline.
Daniher has played just 11 games over the last two seasons due to ongoing groin problems and has only just started running again.
Asked if he could miss the first half of this season, Richardson said: โYeah possibly. But given itโs been a couple of years so itโs a hard one to gauge when he will be back into full training,โ Richardson told SEN Breakfast.
โHeโs been doing a little bit more than jogging and stepping up to striding, as long as he continues to be pain-free and continues to progress, he may progress pretty quickly, but weโre not going to put any time on it.
โWhat we want to do is make sure that when he does come back his body is strong enough to support the rigours of the game.โ
The 25-year old made a recent trip to Ireland to visit a groin specialist in his bid to get back to full health.
Richardson was confident with where Daniher's rehab was at as he gets slowly ramped up.
โJoe is going particularly well. The work that our medical team have done and the link with the people over in Ireland to keep progressing Joe in his rehab,โ he said.
โHeโs able to start building up to some running without pain and weโre at the stage where heโs integrating into some running and how quickly that progresses is still a little bit of an unknown.
โJoe is quite positive at the moment in the way it is progressing and so are we in our medical team.โ