St Kilda has confirmed the campaign of needle mover, and club co-captain Jack Sinclair is over.
Sinclair departed the side's Round 15 clash with the Western Bulldogs in the first quarter with a calf complaint, and was sporting a moon boot, in ominous signs.
"Jack's done for the year,” Coach Ross Lyon said.
"We'll be super conservative, because he's incredibly important to us. It just came out of nowhere, he was feeling a million dollars - we'd actually de-loaded him early in the week. It was just one of those things."
Sinclair, a dual All-Australian, is a pivotal piece of the Saints' offensive identity, and compounding his injury is the spate of other diagnoses sweeping the club.
Recruit Tom de Koning could be out for a month, as he is at loggerheads with club docs as to the recovery timeline from a punctured lung suffered in the same match as his skipper Sinclair's calf injury.
"The ribs got shaken up. He's had a lung puncture before. He's tough. I know that - he's tough. He was talking two weeks, our (club) ‘docs' are talking three to four, so we'll just see how he heals.”
Maligned at different stages of his first year at Moorabbin for failing to produce performance befitting his pay packet, Lyon went into bat for his ruckman.
"According to Champion Data, what we're doing at stoppages this year, we haven't done for 17 years, and he's an important part of that," Lyon said.
It's better news for Max King, who is nearing a long-awaited return to football after his most recent hamstring injury, sustained in his VFL return match.
"We love Max, he's getting closer to a return, and doing full sessions," Lyon offered.
"He looks a million bucks. The Gold Coast (rehabilitation trip) was a real circuit breaker - he worked with some great people up there.
Despite managing just 83 games since his 2020 debut, Lyon is bullish about what his forgotten spearhead can produce, while making particular note of the woes that befell Blue-turned-Swan Charlie Curnow before he broke out to claim two Coleman Medals.
"He (King) was pretty special for us in ‘23, on that run into the finals. He had just come back and was kicking three a week," Lyon said.
"He's in as good a place as he's been for a long time, and we (as a club) are too. We'll drive forward with that, and keep our fingers crossed, and get him to the line, and build the next six years."
The Saints play Essendon on Sunday afternoon, at Marvel Stadium.
