In encouraging news, exciting first-year player Clay Hall will only spend a minimal amount of time on the sidelines after sustaining an ankle injury in last Saturday’s intraclub game.

Hall was helped from the ground after the injury occurred and took no further part, but is expected to be available for matches within three-to-four weeks.

After receiving the positive scan results, Hall said it’s been an emotional rollercoaster.

“It’s quite funny, the past few days have been up and down with emotions,” Hall said.

“Obviously when it first happens, you’re not sure what it is, you need to get scans, it wasn’t looking great at this point, so I was really flat at that stage.

“Then the scans came back, and they were looking really good, so at the moment I’m looking like I should be back pretty shortly, as long as I’m doing my rehab to the best of my ability.

“On a good note, it’s a short-term injury and these things happen in footy, so you’ve got to expect it.”

Hall has impressed his coaches, teammates and onlookers throughout the pre-season so far and said he has settled into the midfield group well since arriving.

“I was feeling really good, I was feeling really fit, I thought I was fitting in with the midfield group really well,” Hall said.

“All the older and younger boys in that midfield group in particular were helping me a lot, so I was starting to sort of mould into that group, not just in the midfield group but in the whole team really well.

“So to have a blow like this is a little bit annoying but there’s a few areas of my game that I can still work on with this injury so there’s also a few positives to take away from it.”

The Eagles will take on Fremantle this Saturday in the team’s first pre-season scratch match, and Hall said the team is excited to face an opposition.

“There is so much excitement at the moment, we even had a meeting today and just the fact that the scratch match against Freo this weekend was brought up, you can just tell there’s that there’s that real high sense of energy,” Hall said.

“The boys are really keen, after having a strong pre-season under our belt we can finally crack in into an opposition.

“Even though it is a scratch match, you can see that the energy is so high which is setting us up in really good stead for the season to start.”