St Kilda has ruled out dual All-Australian Leigh Montagna and off-season recruit Koby Stevens from Saturday’s season opener against Melbourne at Etihad Stadium.
Montagna strained his calf on the eve of the JLT Community Series and didn’t feature once in the pre-season competition, while Stevens suffered a bout of food poisoning ahead of the Saints clash with Sydney in Albury.
Saints GM of Football, Jamie Cox, indicated that the 33-year-old Montagna is likely to get some conditioning under his belt in a Sandringham practice match on Sunday, before mounting his case for a senior return against West Coast in Round 2.
“Unfortunately Leigh Montagna has been battling a calf strain so ‘Joey’ unfortunately won’t quite get up,” Cox told saints.com.au on Tuesday night.
“He’s due to play some minutes, all going well, in our VFL practice match on Sunday. He’ll hopefully be available for Round 2, but he’ll miss this week sadly.”
Former Western Bulldogs and West Coast midfielder Stevens will be sidelined for this weekend, by Cox said the 25-year-old could return for the trip to Western Australia.
“Koby Stevens missed our JLT match last week with food poisoning and lost a bit of weight,” he said.
“Koby also won’t be available this week but is recovering well and should also be back available for Round 2.”
Along with young key defender Hugh Goddard, who is on the comeback trail from a ruptured Achilles tendon, second-year players Bailey Rice, Nick O'Kearney and Nick Coughlan also find themselves on the injury list.
Father-son recruit Rice broke his finger in a marking contest in his maiden JLT Community Series appearance against Carlton and is set to return in two weeks time, while O'Kearney strained a ligament in his knee on the same day and is also set to return in a fortnight's time.
Rookie key defender Coughlan will miss at least the next five or six weeks due to a stress reaction in his foot.
