“His groins are fine, his groins are fine … he is playing every week. There is no reason why his kicking has anything to do with his groins. His groins are fine,” Mitchell said last Wednesday.
“He kicked the ball reasonably well last week, I thought. I am really happy with how he is kicking. I can get you all the kicks that he has done that hardly anyone else in the competition can pull off, and he has done them over the last month. The kicking – that is a storm in a teacup.
“I am not concerned about his kicking.”
Mitchell bristled when pressed further on Sicily last week.
“His groins are fine – he’s playing every week, there’s no reason that his kicking has anything to do with his groins,” he said.
“Go watch all of his kicks and tell me which ones you think he could do better. Bring me back, show me some vision, but I’m really happy with how he’s kicking.
“I can get you all the kicks he’s done, that hardly anyone in the competition can pull off, and he’s done them over the last month. That’s a storm in a teacup.”
Hawthorn’s head doctor said Sicily’s injury was not significant enough to justify his omission before the Collingwood game.
“Unfortunately, James’ injury has flared up post the Collingwood game on Friday night after showing improvement in the weeks prior,” the club’s doctor Liam West said in a statement.
“Having played every game this season, we were always looking to give James an extended break around the bye, so we’ve decided to bring this forward.”
Burge explained that the Hawks were already planning to give Sicily a rest for next Friday night’s game against the Crows.
“But just in the last fortnight, we’ve just noticed that his strength numbers have come down a little bit, and we need them to come back up so we were going to take the opportunity into the bye to take next week off the table and have that fortnight to prepare him for post-bye,” Burge said.
“But we’re now going to take this week as well.
“That’ll take him out of the next two games and we’ll have the bye as well to get some rehabilitation and get his strength numbers back up and get on top of this issue so we can get him back to full training and back to playing football.”
The Hawks estimate key forward Mitch Lewis (knee) is still about three weeks from a return, while star onballer Will Day (foot) is still two to three months away.
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