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Buckley: The Hawks needed to risk Will Day
Jaiden Sciberras • August 5th, 2025 9:00 pm
Hawthorn superstar Will Day has suffered a heartbreaking re-injury, going down with a season-ending foot concern during his first game back from an extended recovery.
The reoccurring injury has tormented the 24-year-old for two seasons, initially missing six games in 2024 before requiring surgery following Hawthorn’s Round 3 contest with GWS in 2025.
The injury - navicular bone stress – is known to be incredibly difficult to manage, with Essendon legend James Hird describing the injury as “insidious” having dealt with the same concern three times through his illustrious career. Now, having gone down within his return to football, the Hawks will need to push on without their star man.
Clearly playing with discomfort, questions are being asked as to whether the club is at fault for playing Will Day when he may not have been ready, and further questions have arisen over the club continuing to field Day when the signs of potential soreness were clear.
However, given the time and effort spent on preparing Will Day for his return to senior football, former Collingwood coach Nathan Buckley believes there isn’t much more that the club could have done.
“If we went through the most important players to a team, we’d have Will Day up there,” Buckley told SEN’s Whateley.
“There’s been an undercurrent of criticism of Hawthorn about how they’ve handled it – a young bloke with a reoccurring injury. Without knowledge of what’s happened internally, I don’t think they could have handled it any better.
“Clearly, he’s had an injury, he had surgery on it. Think with James Hird – it nearly ended his career, the navicular stress and then potential fracture. We’re assuming that it’s still stress at this point, but there must have been a hairline fracture to go in and operate.
“Then you give him all the time in the world, and you slowly build up the load on the foot and on the body, and you try to get to a point where you can return to play. He would not have got back to ‘return to play’ state unless he’d been able to elevate those loads without damaging the foot any further.
“There’s a certain point you get to, where you go and play a game. If you play a game, that goes to a load and an intensity above anything that you can do in training, as much as you like to train as you play.
“I reckon the Hawks needed to do it, and they needed to do it this far out from finals to find out whether it was an ongoing concern. Will Day would not have forgiven himself or the club if they hadn’t taken those steps, and clearly, he was ready to take those steps, so you’ve got to find out.
“Now, the feedback that they’ve got is obviously no, this isn’t sustainable. Whether he has reinjured, or whether he’s just flared up, and they’ve made a decision on future versus present.
“But you are here to contend, you are here to make finals, you are here to win flags. That’s why you play the game, so you’ve got to go to the edge, and sometimes you go over the edge to find out whether you can do that or not.
“I think Hawthorn have done that, I think Will Day has done that. I can’t see how it’s been mismanaged in any way - it’s just bad luck. It’s bad luck for the club; it’s bad luck for the young fell. Now we come back and hope that there’s no long-term ramifications from it, but he has time.
“There’s no guarantees in this game, but I hope that he’s able to find a way through it and his foot strengthens up and that we see a full career on the other side of this, but I don’t think that Hawthorn or Will Day should be criticised in any shape or form, because this is what it’s all about.”
It was earlier revealed by AFL.com.au journalist Josh Gabelich that the star Hawk will not require surgery, with expectations of a full recovery prior to the start of pre-season.
