Young forward Brayden George is closing in on a full-contact match sim appearance after recovering from an ACL injury and dislocated elbow.

George, who was drafted with pick No.26 of the 2022 AFL Draft, was rehabbing his knee when selected by the Roos and didn’t feature at any level during the 2023 season.

An off-season elbow dislocation in his home town of Wangaratta saw the 20-year-old go back under the knife, but he's now in shape to mix it with his teammates under no physical restriction.

"Finally, he's going to get let loose as of next week," head of performance Kevin White told NMFC Media.

"He'll be unrestricted off of that elbow injury … and we'll see him in match simulation next Friday."

After impressing in the early stages of Friday's match sim, recruit Zac Fisher departed the field with a hamstring complaint.

"Zac came out of match sim after the second quarter. He felt an incident in his hamstring, so he'll get that scanned over the weekend just to assess for a hamstring strain," White said.

Eddie Ford suffered a high-grade ankle syndesmosis in a session pre-Christmas and will now "build into some more footy function" over the next 3-4 weeks.

"He's tracking really well at this point. He had surgery three days before Christmas, recovered well, and he has a second running session under his belt now," White said.

Experienced defender Aidan Corr is also dealing with the high-grade ankle sprain he sustained at the team’s Gold Coast pre-season camp but is approaching his return date quickly.

"We went conservative management with 'Corry'," White said.

"At the minute, he's progressing his running loads really well. With a history of calf and soft tissue issues from previous years, the one thing with 'Corry' is that we want to build enough high-speed running load and sprint work as we can before he starts to integrate into match sims."

"Hopefully we see 'Corry' in full ground match simulations within 2-3 weeks."

Fellow key defender Griffin Logue is "doing really well" as he continues to recover from the ACL injury he suffered late last season.

"His jump landing, plyometric and football function is at a really high level for this early stage," White said.

"It would have been pencilled in post-surgery (for him) to return and to play anywhere between AFL Round 10 and 14, so he's tracking really nicely on that."

Emerging backman Jackson Archer is battling a groin issue that arose in 2023 and is 3-4 weeks away from joining the main group's drills, while co-captain Luke McDonald (hamstring) is on a similar trajectory.

"Jackson had a little bit of groin soreness in the back half of last year. He came down with his loads pre-Christmas, at the minute he's building back up through his football conditioning with 'Crossy' (rehabilitation coach Daniel Cross), and is tolerating the loads really well," White said.

"In the next 3-4 weeks, he'll start to join the main group in terms of all the drills except for match simulation … so probably 5-6 weeks before Jackson's really getting involved into the match simulation.

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"Luke had a tendon repair at the end of last season.

"He's now at a level where he's increasing in his sprint work, his high-speed running and like the rest of the boys, he will drip feed into the drills over the next four-week block.

"Then, after that four-week block, hopefully we'll see Luke start to re-emerge with the main group into some match simulation."

After dealing with the effects of two concussion last season, dynamic tall Callum Coleman-Jones has been cleared for full-contact match play and was involved in the four-quarter match sim on Friday.

"Callum's going well now, we had some conservative management just around some lingering symptoms of his concussion at the back end of last year," White said.

"(It's) a great boost for Callum and a great boost for the club."