Wright man for the job

AFTER five games in the NEAFL working his way back to form and fitness, talented Gold Coast big man Peter Wright is ready to help the struggling Suns turn their season around.

Wright will make his first appearance of 2018 against Hawthorn in Launceston this afternoon, having fully recovered from a calf strain that derailed the first half of his year. The 203cm forward played all 22 games last year and had a near flawless pre-season until he went down with the calf problem at the beginning of the JLT series.

It has taken the 21-year-old longer than hoped to fully shake the problem, but he is now itching to use his built-up frustration at watching from the sidelines to have an impact on his return.

“I hadn’t missed the whole pre-season and the body was feeling really good, I had a bit of a viral flu and lost about 7kg in a couple of days and missed a few weeks training, then did the calf on the back of that,” Wright (pictured right) said.

“It was a grade two first of all and a lot of bleeding around it, it made it more difficult to come back. It took a couple of weeks for it to settle down before I could start running and then I had a couple of false starts. You would have a few weeks off and start running again and then get sore, so would have to back off again.

“It ended up being a three-month calf, which is pretty rare but I just got dealt those cards.

“It was real frustrating last week watching on, we had the whole NEAFL side and injured boys on the sidelines and watching that [the loss to St Kilda] was hard. “It is good to be back out there playing.”

— ADAM SMITH