North Melbourne key defender Ben McKay has been cleared of any major issues, following an injury suffered in the loss to St Kilda.

McKay was removed from the contest late in the fourth quarter, citing hamstring tightness as the reason for his withdrawal.

General Manager of Football Brady Rawlings says the club didn’t want to risk serious injury to McKay by putting him back on.

“He’s pulled up quite well so we expect him to train most of tomorrow for the main session,” Rawlings told North Media.

“He came off with some tightness and we just didn’t want to take the risk of putting him back on with only a few minutes to go.

“It’s a really good result for us.”

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Robbie Tarrant could be joining McKay in North’s defence sooner rather than later, as he continues his comeback from a kidney issue.

Tarrant has not been sighted in North colours so far this season and was due to appear in North’s VFL clash with Coburg last week before its cancellation.

But Rawlings says while the rescheduling of the fixture is frustrating, it hasn’t necessarily delayed Tarrant’s return.

“He got a really good training session in with the other non-selected players on Saturday … we had him set to play a half in the VFL but obviously that opportunity was taken away from us,” Rawlings said. 

“We’ve set him up really well for another really big hit-out tomorrow with the full group. We’ll get some really good sessions into him, then another full week of training next week and we’ll see how he goes from there.”

Kyron Hayden has put a strong block of training together, as he continues to recover from a hamstring injury.

Due to the reoccurring nature of the injury, Rawlings has re-iterated the club’s cautious approach to his recovery.

“Kyron is training fully at the moment and we’ll get another full training session into him with the main group tomorrow. He’s looking really sharp,” he said.

“As I’ve said previously, we’ve been pretty conservative given he’d had a reoccurrence. We want to see a really strong few weeks of main training, which he’s done really well to this point.

“Another week of training post tomorrow’s session should have him set up well to play.”

Will Walker’s return to the field looks to have been delayed, with the number 27 suffering a calf knock, having recovered from a thumb issue. 

Walker suffered the thumb injury during North’s Round 3 VFL clash with Southport, but has recovered from surgery well.

Rawlings says while it looks to be a bad corky for the versatile forward, there doesn’t look to be too much cause for concern long-term.

“Unfortunately, Will copped a significant corky in his calf in Saturday’s non-selected training session,” he added. 

“There was a lot of bleeding and he could hardly put any weight on it for the rest of that day and leading into Sunday as well.

“We just need to wait and see how it pulls up in the coming days.”

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