West Coast Eagles’ star off-season signing Sharrod Wellingham is poised to make his long-awaited return to football by playing reserves with Claremont this week. After playing at East Perth earlier this season, when recovering from the first of two ankle injuries, Wellingham will now play at Claremont because of a quirk in the WAFL fixtures. Normally, AFL players resuming from injury play at the lowest-placed WAFL reserves team, but in this instance that is the Fremantle-aligned Peel. The Thunder are playing West Perth, who are eighth in the competition, in Mandurah and the Falcons agreed to a request to have Wellingham line up for the next-placed Tigers. So Wellingham will play for Claremont against South Fremantle. Unfortunately, the WAFL scheduling has East Perth having a bye both this week and next, so if Wellingham needs another hit-out before being considered for senior selection, it could mean consecutive games with the Claremont twos. It has been a frustrating season for Wellingham, first damaging an ankle the day after playing his first NAB Cup game for West Coast, and then suffering a similar injury to the other ankle in the thrilling victory against North Melbourne in round eight. He has made solid progress and has worked hard to resume and is anxious to impact the second half of the year. For an insight into Wellingham’s journey this year, tune into Eagle Vision on Sunday at 7pm on Channel 7. Wellingham, traded to West Coast from Collingwood last October, is a player who comes to hand quickly and played just one game for East Perth early in the season before making his debut against the Western Bulldogs in round six.
Posted on: Wed, 03 Jul 2013 08:09:36 +0000
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