St Kilda's No.10 draft pick Alix Tauru will have a wait before getting into full training at his new club, as the Saints take a cautious approach with their new recruit's back injury.
Tauru developed a back stress fracture at the end of Gippsland Power's Coates Talent League season, discovering the injury after testing strongly at the Telstra AFL Draft Combine in October.
The Saints and all clubs were aware of the injury ahead of the draft, with St Kilda selecting the aggressive and strong-marking 193cm talent with its second top-10 pick after bringing in Tobie Travaglia with pick 8.
But the club does not expect him to take part in full training until February next year as he recovers from the injury.
"He's essentially got a stress fracture in his back. He has been six weeks without doing running and loading and he probably has another six weeks ahead of no running but doing gradual loading on a bike and in the pool and things like that," Saints football manager David Misson told AFL.com.au.
"He won't start running until after Christmas and we want to set him up to have a good season, so he really won't be training with the group until at the earliest late January but probably early to mid-February, realistically.
Tauru won't need surgery, with the Saints to do follow-up scans before their Christmas break to test how the stress fracture has settled before gradually lifting his re-loading process during the pre-season. Misson said the 18-year-old, who joined the club last week, was keen to get the injury under control before getting into his AFL career.
"He's pretty realistic about where he's at. He says he understands it's a bit more of a longer process to get him back into full training. He wants to get back to feeling good, as his back hasn't been feeling great for a while now. So he realises there's an opportunity in this stage to let it settle down before he gets back into things," Misson said.
"Our medical and high performance guys are really good in painting that picture for him. Sometimes it's a good way to learn good habits through the rehab process, even though you'd love to be out there with the group, and I don't think it's going to be a bad thing for him, to be honest.
"It's not uncommon with young guys, especially who have had growth spurts in their formative years. We've had it with Olli Hotton and Angus McLennan, where both came in with similar things, so we're being really cautious."
The Saints drafted six players last week in the national draft – Travaglia, Tauru, James Barrat, Hugh Boxshall, Alex Dodson and Patrick Said – and are trialling mature-age ruckman Harry Boyd as part of the supplemental selection period window. Misson said the rest of the Saints' draftee group would progress into training next week.
"We have a process over a couple of weeks where we build them into joining the main group. The first week they work with one of the high performance guys and the development coach away from the main group, just so that we can get a handle on where they're at, more than anything. And then (they) start to integrate them into the main group in week two," Misson said.
