Schoenmakers opts against LARS

Ryan Schoenmakers will have traditional surgery on his injured knee. Picture: Robert Cianflone Source: Getty Images

RYAN Schoenmakers will have a traditional knee reconstruction next week, Hawthorn coach Alastair Clarkson confirmed this morning.

The defender snapped his anterior cruciate ligament and strained the medial ligament in his right knee early in the win over Fremantle last Saturday.

He has consulted with surgeons in the past 48 hours, but Clarkson said LARS surgery - which would have given the 22-year-old a chance to return before the end of the season - was not considered.

Schoenmakers' absence has opened the door for Brian Lake to make his debut for the club against North Melbourne at the MCG tomorrow.

The former Western Bulldogs defender has endured a frustrating start to his career in brown and gold, having struggled with a lingering calf injury before searching for match fitness in the VFL.

"He's a pretty handy replacement for Schoenmakers," Clarkson said.

"We needed a key back to come in to the side, but we just needed to make sure he had that really good base and match fitness and that's why he played two or three games in the VFL side.

"Certainly (Lake does) solidify our defence a little bit with Schoey going out of the side with that knee. We recruited him for a purpose, to help play on those bigger fellas in the front half.

"The Kangaroos have got two or three bigger type guys in their front half, so it's a really good game for him to come in and give us some assistance there."

Clarkson said it was too early to say what the loss of Schoenmakers and addition of Lake to the Hawks backline would mean for other defenders such as Josh Gibson.

"This is the first week that we're going to find out what it's like without Schoey in our side," he said.

"He's been a really important part to our back mix for a long time now, he's still learning as a player but we're slowly getting there with him and it's really unfortunate that he's going to miss so much footy for the rest of this year.

"He's a strong and resilient player, he'll come back from that. But in the meantime we've just got to see how our back mix unfolds and that will just present an opportunity for a different player.

"This particular week it's Brian Lake. How that implicates other players? Matthew Spangher will get an opportunity in the weeks to come. We'll just see what sort of forward lines we have to come up against and then make our decisions on how we structure up from there."

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