Emerging young guns Jack Billings and Jimmy Webster won’t face Fremantle on Saturday after succumbing to ankle and illness ailments respectively, but are likely to miss only one week.

St Kilda Coach Alan Richardson revealed Billings hurt his ankle in the opening quarter of last Sunday’s win over Essendon, before returning and running out the game despite being restricted. But the smooth mover has struggled with his movement this week and will miss his first game of the season after playing the first nine.

“‘JB’ did his ankle pretty early in the game for us last week. He was off for about 15 minutes (before) we got him back out there. To his credit he hung in there for us. But his movement was restricted,” Richardson told reporters at a press conference on Friday.

“Same deal with training this week. He gave himself every chance, trained reasonably strongly on Thursday, but just wasn’t able to be as free as we’d like him to be so he’ll miss.”

Rebounding defender Webster will also miss after suffering from illness on Thursday, which Richardson said had forced the Tasmanian into quarantine and out of the home he shares with key forward duo Paddy McCartin and Tim Membrey.

“Jimmy’s just crook. He got through training but then had to head home. He lives with Paddy and Membrey, so we’ve had to put him in isolation,” Richardson said.

“He had to go and move into his girlfriend’s house for the night, apologies to his girlfriend. He’ll have to miss.”

Richardson suggested the pair would return for next weekend’s trip to South Australia to play Adelaide, but wouldn’t guarantee them a spot, drawing parallels with when Membrey came in for McCartin and kept the 2014 No. 1 pick out of the team for a couple of weeks due to his form.

 “The message has been that they need to rest up this weekend and train strongly this week and there’s every chance that they’ll come back in,” Richardson said.

“But if those players who have replaced them perform strongly, not unlike Paddy and Membrey earlier in the year, our want was to get Paddy back into the team a bit earlier but Tim kept him at bay. We’ll just have to wait and see on that.”