MELBOURNE midfielder Tom Scully should be set to return to the Demons team to take on Geelong next week.
Scully missed Sunday's loss to Hawthorn with a persistent knee injury but Melbourne coach Dean Bailey said he was a good chance of keeping his absence to just one week.
"He'd be a chance I think. He was cross-training reasonably well and he was probably a low chance to play this week. He seems to be cross-training OK but he is a day-to-day proposition," Bailey said.
Scully missed the first part of the 2011 season owing to the injury amid concern the recurrent problem could plague the Demon throughout his career.
Scully previously missed what would have been his final game of junior football in 2009 when he was ruled out of the Dandenong Stingrays TAC Cup Grand Final.
However, Bailey dismissed suggestions it would be an ongoing worry for his star midfielder.
"My experience with a number of players has been that players get to play very good careers. I think Andrew McLeod had a knee injury at 24-25 and played until he was 34-35 and it didn't seem to affect him," Bailey said.
"It's how you manage it and when Tommy was up and going he hardly missed any of the trainings. He was training well and running fast. I think his knee is in pretty good shape at the moment.
"If he's good enough and smart enough he'll have a long-term career as long as it's well-managed like every other player. I don't see it as an issue."
The Demons never looked a serious threat to Hawthorn on Sunday after conceding the first five goals of the match. Bailey said turnovers and an inability to slow Hawthorn's ball movement were key factors in the loss.
"You want to create easy or fast turnovers and you want to cough up slow turnovers where it's contested possession after contested possession, and go to a stoppage," he said.
"We hand-delivered a couple but you've got to give them credit for reading the play as well. They were able to capitalise on it and they did it very well.
"They started particularly well, you're not going to win too many games giving teams a five-goal head start."
Melbourne had 113 fewer possessions than Hawthorn in its first clash of a month-long block where it faces the Hawks, Geelong, Carlton and West Coast.
"Each quarter we lost by a couple of goals which is not what you want to be able to create. The next month is really good for us to play against four of the top six teams," Bailey said.
"Today we didn't match it with them long enough, that's what the scoreboard at the end says. They took a lot of their opportunities and turned them into goals. That was partly because of what they did and also the quality of turnover we coughed up."
Luke Holmesby covers Melbourne news for afl.com.au. Follow him on Twitter: @AFL_LHolmesby
