Gold Coast coach Damien Hardwick has confirmed Christian Petracca won’t play in Gather Round and offered an update on his timeline to return from a hamstring injury.
Petracca sustained the injury in Round 2 against Richmond and was originally listed as out for the “medium term”.
But that timeline changed last week when the Suns revealed he was available in the “short term”, listing him as 1-3 weeks.
There were reports that Petracca was back into full training too, with Hardwick revealing after Sunday’s loss to Melbourne that he was pushing to play Gather Round.
But the Suns coach has opted to leave him out despite Petracca’s push to play, needing a two-week build, potentially instead returning in Round 6 against Essendon or Round 7 away to Hawthorn.
“He won’t play,” Hardwick said about Petracca playing Gather Round. “He was very, very forthright in wanting to play, but I am obviously a little bit conservative with these things.
“I’d love to get him to have two weeks of full training under his belt and then he puts his hands up for the remainder of the year.
“He’s such an important player to the way we want to play and what we’re going to be about. We’ll take a conservative approach.
“He was pushing very, very hard, even with a late phone call yesterday, just to make sure I was sold on it. But that’s want great players do, they always want to put their hand up to play the game. Sometimes a coach has to save them a bit from themselves.”
