St Kilda midfielder David Armitage remains in hospital four days after slashing his knee open in the weekend’s loss to Adelaide.
Armitage is being monitored in hospital to avoid infection from the deep laceration and will miss Saturday night's match against Essendon, and could miss up to a month of football from the unusual injury.
The injury is a terrible blow for the Saints who, despite two strong early-season wins against Melbourne and Greater Western Sydney, were monstered by Adelaide and have a difficult month ahead with Brisbane, Hawthorn and Carlton to follow Essendon.
Essendon’s star bargain-basement recruit Paul Chapman has been cleared to resume for the Bombers after having scans on his ankle on Wednesday, which confirmed he was OK to play.
Chapman missed the Bombers' trip to Perth last week as part of his program of managing his body through the season.
Armitage is not expected to be fit for next week’s home game against Brisbane, a side the Saints would be favoured to beat. While the Saints then take on the reigning premier they would be extremely keen to ensure the tough onballer did not miss the clash with Carlton - another the Saints would fancy they are a chance of winning.
"He won’t play this week. He is likely to miss two weeks and the worst case scenario at the moment is for him to miss four, but we are optimistic it will be no more than two," St Kilda’s head of football Chris Pelchen said.
Armitage ripped his leg open when he landed on the bottom of Paddy Dangerfield’s boot as he dived to tackle the Crows player. There was oddly no blood at the time, but Armitage looked down and could see ligaments below the kneecap in his leg.
He also suffered a blow to the head at the time and a cut lip so was treated for concussion and had stitches in his leg during the half-time break. Remarkably, he was able to return to the ground in the second half.
Once the leg cooled down, the area around the knee swelled and by Monday Armitage was unable to bend his leg. He was admitted to hospital that afternoon and was put on an intravenous drop to stave of infection.
"The gash to the leg was very nasty. He said it did not bleed but all he could see was the slice, which was very deep and doctors said it was probably kneecap he could see," Pelchen said.
"If you saw him on the Monday, he could not bend his leg, so we put him into hospital to manage the wound and avoid any infection."
Armitage has been one of St Kilda’s stand outs this season, especially when the Saints had a depleted midfield in the early rounds.
Jack Steven returned against Adelaide for his first game of the season and young tagger Tom Curren did an exceptional job on Dangerfield.
