HE booted seven goals in his best performance yet for his new club Kiewa-Sandy Creek, but Bryce Garvey doesn't remember much from the 132-point win over Dederang-Mt Beauty.
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It's little wonder, given Garvey was being airlifted from Albury to Melbourne after a sickening accident in the third quarter.
Garvey was crunched in a marking contest, breaking his jaw in two places as his head collided with another player’s shoulder on the way to the ground.
Now back in Wodonga and facing a lengthy stint on the sidelines, Garvey said it had been a stressful ordeal but was pleased the surgery had gone off without a hitch.
“It’s looking a bit ugly at the moment, but I’ll be alright,” he said.
“Having to be airlifted from Albury to Melbourne for surgery wasn’t the greatest feeling, but everything went pretty well.”
While he was pleased that one of his key recruits was going to be alright, Hawks coach Callum Turner said losing Garvey was hardly ideal.
“He’s been able to get plates inserted of wires, which means he’ll recover a little bit faster,” he said.
“We’re lucky it happened at this time of year.
“He was on track for 10 goals on Saturday, we’d put him in the forward line because it was starting to get a little bit clogged up.
“He’d come out and taken a couple of nice marks at full-forward, so it wasn’t the way we wanted his day to end.”
Garvey could be out for as long as two months, but Turner said he was more confident than ever before that the Hawks had the depth to cover for him.
“It’s a bit of a danger game for us this week, we have a few other niggling injuries and Wahgunyah are still a bit of an unknown quantity,” he said.
“But there’s a few guys in the reserves who have been knocking on the door of senior selection for a few weeks now.
“Our recruiting has left us a bit more even across the ground, guys like Nathan Vogel are really starting to come into their own.”