JAEGER O’Meara’s immediate playing future is on hold with the star midfielder struck down with a concerning new knee injury that will keep him out until late in the season.

But the prized Hawthorn recruit has insisted it is merely a “hiccup”.

The 23-year-old has a long history of knee problems — the most recent of which had sidelined him since Round 6 — with the club revealing that bone stress in his kneecap is the latest setback in a string of troubles.

MID-SEASON REPORT: HAWKS FALL HARD

But O’Meara has maintained that he intends to feature this season.

“Obviously I’d love to be out there playing with the boys, but I’ve had a little bit of a hiccup,” he told the club website.

“We know what it (the injury) is now and I’m doing a solid block of training.

media_camera Hawks recruit Jaeger O'Meara hasn’t played since Round 6. Picture: Wayne Ludbey

“I’m looking to play some more footy towards the back-end of the year but at the moment, we’ve just had to put the handbrake on a little bit and reassess and then we’ll go again hopefully towards the back-end of the year.”

Despite it occurring in the same knee — his right — the Hawks are adamant that the new injury is unrelated to the patella tendon injury that has plagued him since he ruptured the tendon in 2015 while at Gold Coast.

The club has refused to put a timeline on any return, and had wanted to reassess O’Meara after the recent weekend’s bye in the hope he could return in coming weeks.

But the issue had persisted, with the club now hopeful of a late-season return for the young gun.

When O’Meara joined the Hawks at the end of last season, he had not played a senior game for two seasons due to knee issues that had required surgery.

He played every pre-season game and the first three games of this season before a knock to that knee saw him miss two games before he was again felled with bone bruising after Round 6, asserting last month that the injury would not be career-threatening.

Club fitness boss Andrew Russell maintained that the fact it is a new problem with the patella rather than a recurrence is a positive.

“We are really confident it will (settle down), because he had four months of pain free, high-quality training in the pre-season. He felt 100 per cent (and) he moved as well as he ever has before,” he said on the club website.

media_camera Jaeger O'Meara at Hawthorn training. Picture: Tom Huntley

“As soon as this issue settles down we will get him back going again, and at this stage we’ll be preparing him to play later in the season ... but we’ll be monitoring that really closely the whole time.”

Lengthy eleventh-hour discussions in last year’s trade period saw O’Meara land at Hawthorn in what had proved to be a contentious trade period.

The Hawks handed pick 10 and their 2017 second-round pick to Gold Coast in exchange for O’Meara, having earlier relinquished their 2017 first-round selection — currently No.2 — to St Kilda.

In a further blow for Hawthorn, defender Josh Gibson could miss up to a month due to the adductor strain he suffered against Gold Coast in Round 12, but the club is hopeful he will only be out for two weeks.

Grant Birchall is available for selection after recovering from a knee strain and while Ben Stratton was close to playing against Adelaide tomorrow night after battling bone bruising in his knee, he will be held back in the hope he will return against Collingwood in Round 15.