MELBOURNE’S Christian Petracca will miss a portion of the pre-season after injuring his toe during the Christmas break.

Christian sustained the injury whilst playing basketball during the Christmas break period. He reported this soreness during screening on the first day back of pre-season training on Monday, with scans confirming a small crack to the fifth toe of his right foot.

Christian will spend the next four weeks off legs and will then progress his rehab to get him back to participating in full training. Christian will still be able to continue the strengthening component of his knee rehabilitation program while recovering from this injury.

Melbourne Coach Paul Roos said “Christian’s rehab up until this point has been going really well, but when you’re an AFL player, you need to understand that everything you do impacts your ability to prepare and contribute to the team and this incident is clearly an interruption. We have been very clear as a club about not putting expectations on our first year players, so its important to keep some perspective about this - It’s a harsh lesson for Christian, but one we are sure he is going to learn from as he develops as an AFL player.”