Geelong have confirmed captain Patrick Dangerfield will miss up to six weeks with his hamstring injury.
Dangerfield limped off during the third quarter of the Cats’ win over Carlton on Saturday.
It is the second time the 34-year-old has strained his hamstring this year, after also suffering the same injury in Round 2 against Adelaide.
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He missed three games last time before returning to play North Melbourne — the week before the Blues’ clash.
But this time the club will take a cautious approach with a four-to-six-week timeline.
It’s a massive blow for the unbeaten Cats, who face fellow top-four contenders Melbourne, Port Adelaide and GWS Giants in the next month.
“The injury Pat has sustained is similar to the one from earlier in the season where he missed 21 days,” Geelong assistant general manager of football Brett Johnson said.
“Given the injury is to the same leg, we will continue to take a conservative approach in his recovery and return to play.
“With a focus to set Pat up for the second part of the season, at this stage he will miss four-to-six weeks, however we will re-assess his progress and the timeframe that he returns to the line-up as he works through his training program.”
Dangerfield was forced to defend the club’s big change to pre-season training, which was designed to “bullet-proof hamstring”.
“We’ve changed from three main sessions a week, to two main sessions,” he said on his podcast Reel Adventures in February.
“The reason for that is that we’ve really increased our high speed. We’ve changed. Personally, I’ve gone from 450-odd metres in terms of high speed. High speed is above 24 kilometres an hour.
“The reason behind it is to try and bullet-proof hamstrings, so by the time you hit games, it should feel like games are almost the de-load.”
But after suffering two hamstring injuries in the space of seven rounds, questions were asked if the training change had an impact.
“Depends how you look at it, had I not done that work, is it a far worse injury potentially? You don’t know,” he said on Monday
In better news for the Cats, vice-captain Tom Stewart will return for Saturday night’s clash with Melbourne after missing last week with concussion.