Despite Nathan Freeman suffering another setback in his comeback from chronic hamstring injuries, St Kilda remains confident their prized recruit can enjoy a long and prosperous career in the AFL.

The former top ten pick experienced another strain in his right hamstring during a training session with Sandringham on Friday night and is set for an extended spell on the sidelines.

GM of Football Performance Jamie Cox said the frustrated midfielder is in a positive headspace despite running into another roadblock in his long pursuit to play regular senior football.

“Nathan had an incident on the Friday night which in isolation is about a three to four week hamstring,” Cox told reporters at a press conference at Linen House Centre on Tuesday.

“Given his frustration and given that it’s another incident we’ll reassess Nathan’s progress from here, we’ll reassess what the next intervention is I suppose.

“He’s in good spirits, we’re all a bit frustrated by it, but we’re confident he’s still going to be a good player for us longer term, it’s just getting over this hurdle.

“He’s a positive kid. He really is a fantastically diligent professional. It’s a space he’s been in before, he’s fully aware of what the process is and he’s fully supportive of the steps we’re going to take to rebuild him.”

Cox said the club had previously investigated myriad options in the medical and high performance space and a number of routes are still yet to be pursued.

“Well we have done that already. We’ve completely changed his program and there’s been a lot of really positive signs,” Cox said.

“This one’s another setback but we’ll basically go back and see what the next step is.

“When Nathan first joined us we had a few things that we could go to to make sure that he got to have an AFL career, there’s still a few options up the sleeve, so we’ll go to the next one.” 

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