Sad news for West Coast Eagles:He will not return due to..

The explosive forward was limited to just three games last season due to a hamstring injury he sustained during practice on Monday; Coby Burgiel also suffered from hamstring tightness, and multiple other players were not able to play.

Even though Burgiel’s strain is not serious, Ryan will miss Round 1 and possibly more.

Eagles football general manager Gavin Bell stated, “Unfortunately, Liam has sustained a high-grade hamstring injury with some tendon damage which will require surgery to repair.”

“We’re all incredibly sad for Liam. He put in a lot of work during the off-season and the Christmas break so that he would be prepared for practice matches.

“We’re hoping he’ll be ready to go back in the early games of the season. The Club will give an update on when he expects to resume playing after surgery when it becomes available.

It follows two seasons in which the team, plagued by injuries, won just five games, winning the wooden spoon the previous year.

On the other hand, Simpson insisted that a younger age profile would result in greater player availability overall.

“Unfortunately, we had two out of three injuries today. There will always be injuries,” Simpson stated on Monday.

“I guess it starts with the players’ actions, approaches, and attendance during the off-season, as well as the kind of program we implement. That dates back to September or October of that year.

“The players we have on our list will be the biggest difference,”

Reueben Ginbey (managed workload) and Elijah Hewett (blisters/foot), the club’s two top draft picks from 2022, will also be progressively added back into the program in the upcoming weeks. Josh Rothan (groin awareness) was also absent from practice, and Dom Sheed (foot) is getting close to returning to running.

Simpson continued, “I just don’t think we can look back; we’re just looking forward.”

“It’s just the nature of the business; there will be ups and downs as well as unanticipated problems.

It’s true that we need to learn from the mistakes we made in the past few years, but we won’t sit around feeling sorry for ourselves. We must go on and focus on the positives.

The Eagles made significant changes to their strength and conditioning staff during the off-season. Paul Turk joined from Collingwood, and Matthew Inness assumed the role of high performance manager.

The Eagles coach stated, “I think the older players on their last legs have moved on, so the list is younger, and that just gives you different avenues and opportunities to train a bit harder or train a bit more. But also get them up to speed as well.

As much as the Eagles were hoping to get a better run of health, the young side is focused on finding its “identity” after “starting from scratch,” Simpson said. This is a different approach (with the new strength and conditioning team), but not significantly different. It’s probably more the change in personnel the last two or three years that we’ll see a change in the availability.

As we’ve previously stated, half of the people on our list are under 22. As such, our work will feel different.

This time last year, I believe we also had about forty training sessions. All that’s required is to instill and then sustain that resilience in the players.

Simpson added that Harley Reid, the first overall pick in the draft, would probably begin his career as a half-back, much like Nick Daicos and Harry Sheezel did.

“From what I’m seeing right now, I think there will be a little bit of back and a little bit of on-ball. However, he moves forward and makes a small appearance there as well,” he remarked.

Without a doubt, we must settle him, and we are currently working on that. However, at the moment, most likely down back and somewhat on-ball.