Sydney Swans star forward Lance Franklin is expected to be able to return to football towards the end of the season despite a setback in his recovery from a hamstring injury. 

Franklin suffered a hamstring strain in Round 14 and has had complications in his recovery.  

Head Physiotherapist Matt Cameron is optimistic that Franklin will return to play this season.

“Lance had a medium hamstring strain four weeks ago and it was a really similar size one to the injury he had earlier in the year and to the same part of the muscle,” Cameron said.

“The muscle from testing has slowly improved over that time and looks to have virtually fully healed.

“Over the last couple of weeks, he has developed some complications with his sciatic nerve that runs from your back through your pelvis and into your hamstring.

“Unfortunately, that is giving him some symptoms in his hamstring, it just doesn’t allow him to get out of a jog at the moment.”

Cameron said the complications had delayed Franklin’s expected return to football.

“The muscle is healing well but the sciatic nerve is the complication,” he said.

“That is something we are getting on top of at the moment, trying a few different treatments that we need to work through in order to make him feel better.

“At this stage it rules him out of this week and it also means he won’t be prepared to play for next week, but we are hoping to have him back running, training and playing towards the end of the year.”

Meanwhile ruckman Callum Sinclair is recovering from shoulder surgery and won’t play again this season.

“When Callum dislocated his shoulder, he had done a reasonable amount of damage to the shoulder as it dislocated,” Cameron said.

“We tried to rehabilitate him, we tried to let his shoulder settle and start his strength work, but it became evident last week that he was still getting some instability in his shoulder.

“It really looked at that stage that he wasn’t going to be able to return to training and playing, so we took the decision to bring the surgery forward.”

Harry Cunningham is also expected to require surgery to overcome an issue with his groin.

“Harry unfortunately had a couple of incidents in that game that he injured his groin on the same side that he injured earlier this year,” Cameron said.

“His whole groin region has now become unsettled and unstable, so it is now something we feel we are going to have to operate on in order to stabilise it.”