Jamie Anderson ruptured his anterior cruciate ligament in the final home and away game against Yarrawonga in late August

He missed the club's thrilling three-point win over Yarrawonga in the grand final on September 25.

The 31-year-old has revealed he was toying with the idea of not having reconstructive surgery,

'I was considering going down the conservative route of not having surgery, I was pretty sure I was going to go down that path," he explained.

"I spoke to my surgeon and he told me anyway that he couldn't do the operation until I could straighten my leg because I had significant bone bruising and other damage in there, I only just scraped across the line three weeks ago of having my leg straight enough to operate on, so even if I had decided to have the operation earlier, I wouldn't have been able to."

Given Anderson elected to have the surgery, but was only able to do so in late October, the general consensus among many 'non-experts' in the football fraternity is that a knee reconstruction is a 12-month recovery and would therefore rule the gun defender out for 2023.

"My surgeon told me that 12-months recovery is a myth, it's more nine to 10 months," he offered of the regular theory.

"My main aim is to get back next year and that time frame allows me a chance to do that.

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"I think mentally as well it will be a lot easier to play and do everything as normal knowing I have that structural integrity of having an ACL, without it it would be in the back of my mind."

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