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Unpacking the injury headaches at Carlton
SEN • June 16th, 2025 12:08 pm
There are some injury concerns at Carlton as the club enters a crucial stage of the 2025 season.
Gun midfielder Sam Walsh has been hit by a stress issue in his foot and will likely be sidelined for as many as six weeks.
Add to that the calf tightness experienced by star forward Charlie Curnow in Sunday night’s 34-point win over West Coast, the hamstring injury suffered by young key position player Hudson O’Keeffe and Harry McKay’s troublesome knee and there are plenty of worries.
AFL Media’s Josh Gabelich unpacked the Blues’ injury woes as they prepare for next Saturday’s must-win meeting with North Melbourne at the MCG.
“Michael Voss has got some injury headaches right now,” Gabelich said on SEN’s Fireball.
“Starting with Sam Walsh. We found out on Saturday morning that he’s got some bone stress in his foot and will miss up to six weeks.
“They think they caught it early, but he’ll miss at least another month at a crucial time in the season. It’s a big blow for them.
“Charlie Curnow was subbed out last night with calf tightness. He’ll get that scanned today.
“A pretty tight turnaround, a six-day break, travel, coming back to face North Melbourne, so he’s in some doubt for that game.
“Hudson O’Keeffe also hurt his hamstring last night, so he’ll get that scanned.”
Gabelich says that McKay, who has featured only seven times this season, may require surgery after his knee failed to respond to treatment.
“Harry McKay is the interesting one. He hasn’t played since Round 11 with a knee injury that just hasn’t improved at all,” Gabelich added.
“Each week they’ve felt at the start of the week that he’d be a chance. They’ll investigate that early this week and they haven’t been able to rule out surgery.
“He’s had a really stop-start time this year. He’s only played seven games. Surgery at this time of the year would make it pretty hard to come back.
“They’re going to investigate this week. An arthroscope would be another month, it would solve the problem. But there’s only nine games to go so it’s a bad time to go under the knife if that’s the way it falls.”
Blues coach Michael Voss said as such in Sunday night’s post-match press conference.
“It’d be too early for me to say other than to say that we need to investigate it further and obviously seeing a specialist is one of those steps that we’ll take,” said Voss.
“And then we’ll make some decisions off the back of that, probably sometime during the week.
“Obviously, we had to look at it a couple of weeks ago, and the advice was to wait and see how it responded.
“It seemed like it was hopeful, that we were hopeful that it turned a corner, but it hasn’t.
“So, we’ll have to just do a little bit more further investigation and make a call from there.”
Already on the injury list is Matt Cottrell (foot), Lachie Cowan (hamstring), Brodie Kemp (achilles), Nic Newman (knee) and Jagga Smith (knee).
After the clash with the Kangaroos, the 6-7 Blues then meet Port Adelaide (Adelaide Oval), Collingwood (MCG) and Brisbane (Marvel Stadium) in what looms as a season-defining stretch of games.
