Macmillan broke his leg in the Round 3 clash against Port Adelaide, and is also aiming for a Round 9 comeback following the bye.
“Whether that is AFL or through a game in the VFL is up to the medical and fitness guys I suppose,’ Macmillan told NMFC.com.au on Monday.
One thing in his favour is his fitness base, built up throughout an uninterrupted run.
“I’ve been, touch wood, pretty lucky in some ways with injuries. I fractured my face a few years back and missed a few weeks but have had three full pre-seasons under my belt up until now. I hadn’t really missed a training session either so with three weeks of solid running, I’d be confident of being fit enough to come back in.”
The nature of the injury also a positive. Macmillan will this week, rid himself of the moon-boot and ditch the crutches as he’s able to walk unaided.
“The specialist told me that if you’re gonna break your leg, this is the type of break you’d want because it’s the fibula (the smaller bone), not the tibia. It was a clean break straight through. I knew it wasn’t the worst case and I was looking at four to six weeks.
“Once the bone is healed, it’s healed and you can get straight back into running. With soft tissue injuries, you have to progress slowly with walking, jogging and running. You just don’t want to get a knock on it until you’re fully back at it.”
Macmillan says he immediately thought of Jack Ziebell when he discovered it was a suspected break following the collision with the Power’s Hamish Hartlett.
“Jack Ziebell broke the tibia and missed years (the remainder after injury). So I thought I could have been in a bit of trouble.”
What hurt most however, was the brutality of his team-mates and support staff.
“I remember Nathan Grima yelling at me to ‘get up’ and I told Brad McKenzie to play in defence while I tried to walk on it. It felt like a massive corky…a real heavy, dull sort of pain. I tried to walk on it and couldn’t so I hobbled to the bench. Then Jona (Segal) our runner yelled at me for not getting off the ground quick enough.
“Nathan has since apologised but I’ve heard nothing from Jona,” Macmillan joked.
One person the 22-year has had lots of sympathy from is Brad Scott. The head coach suffered the same injury in Round 22, 2003 and missed a Grand Final as a result.
“Brad was surprised that I was able to walk on it nine-days later because it took him three weeks to put any weight through his. So it’s coming along well and now I’m hitting that point where we can ramp things up and start pushing to get back out there.”
