St Kilda head of football Geoff Walsh says there was nothing innocuous to Max King’s serious shoulder injury and believes his key forward could be out for up to 20 weeks.
King suffered a shoulder injury at training on Monday and will undergo a shoulder reconstruction in the coming days.
The Saints released a statement earlier on Tuesday detailing King’s injury.
At the time, Walsh confirmed King would miss a chunk of the 2023 season. But elaborating on that to SEN’s The Run Home, he suggested the recovery time could be up to five months.
Max King will spend time on the sidelines after injuring his shoulder.
— St Kilda FC (@stkildafc) December 6, 2022
See you back out there soon, Max 🤝
Given St Kilda plays its first game on March 19 against Fremantle, King may not be seen until after the opening month of the 2023 season.
“It’s going to require a reconstruction, that’s a long time on the sidelines,” Walsh said.
“By the time he rehabs and has his full recovery, back to full training, it’s a 16 to 20-week process really, which is unfortunate.
“He’s very disappointed obviously, he’s had a pretty strong off-season, he’s running and he’s been in the club quite frequently really. In the time I’ve been in there, Max has been one of the people I’ve seen quite really regularly, doing some goal kicking and his running has been strong.”
King was coming off a season where he had the second-most shots on goal across 2022 from any player who didn’t play finals. He booted 52 goals, and if his year-on-year progression is to be believed, shaped as likely to trump that mark again in 2022.
Walsh also shed light on how Monday’s incident occurred.
“(It happened) in a contested marking drill, you’d see these things maybe 100 times at training,” he added.
“It was nothing out of the ordinary per se, just a contested piece of work that went awry for Max, unfortunately.”
King missed his entire debut season with an ACL injury but has since played 22, 18 and 20 games across his last three respective seasons.