ADELAIDE coach Don Pyke remains optimistic star midfielder Rory Sloane won't miss a significant amount of time with damage to the Lisfranc ligament in his foot.



Meanwhile, the club's hamstring crisis continues to haunt the club with forward Riley Knight now the ninth hamstring victim in seven weeks.



Knight's hamstring tendinitis was confirmed on Friday, the same week Wayne Milera was ruled out with a hamstring complaint. Skipper Taylor Walker, who missed round seven with a hamstring, has been named in the side to take on Port Adelaide.

Knight also had an interrupted pre-season after having foot surgery in February.

"He had some hamstring awareness last week. The scans cleared him completely, but he had some tendinitis in that area," Pyke said.

"Again, it's more of a load issue for Riley.

"He was being reloaded, trained today (Friday), trained on Wednesday and we expect that to settle down and he'll be ready to go next week."

Sloane has injured the same foot (his right) that he first injured in the Crows' round two win against Richmond.

He has missed the past three games before suffering damage in a training drill on Wednesday.

"The early indications aren't that severe," Pyke told reporters on Friday.

"We were just doing a ball movement drill and he changed direction in a somewhat unusual action. That was just enough to trigger it.

"Talking to him yesterday and this morning, he's recovered really well from what was a pretty innocuous movement at training on Wednesday.

"That's a really strong indicator that he's not going to go all the way back to where he was four or five weeks ago.

"We're really hopeful that in a couple of weeks, we'll assess it from there."

The recovery period for a Lisfranc injury usually starts at around six weeks on the minor scale, but can be much longer if the ligament is ruptured.

Brisbane player Ryan Lester missed 16 weeks in 2011 when he partially ruptured the Lisfranc ligament in his foot.

Pyke said Sloane didn't need to wear a moon boot and his injury was on the lower end.

"I wouldn't say that he's not without a chance of playing in two weeks, based on how he's recovered," Pyke said.

"Hopefully it's a minor setback. My understanding is it's slightly different (to his original injury), all in the same sort of area though."

If Sloane does miss a big chunk of the second half of the season, it could affect how rival clubs approach the 28-year-old, who is a coveted free agent at the end of the year.

The Crows have made modifications to their training after adopting a different strength program in the off-season to try and get a competitive edge on the competition.

"It's not purely based around the exercises we're doing around the hamstrings, it's a whole of program issue, so we're continually assessing that," Pyke said.

"The feedback we've got from our players in the first seven weeks is that there's clearly an issue there with our hamstrings and we need to address it, so that's what we're doing."

Pyke said veteran midfielder Sam Gibson was on track to play his first game of the season in the SANFL next weekend.

Gibson played 130 consecutive games with North Melbourne and was picked for the Crows' round one clash with Essendon. However, he injured his hamstring at the club's training session at Casey Fields the day before the game.