Sheringham, who was in the frame to be promoted to the senior list and was in the mix to play against Hawthorn on Monday, is likely to be sidelined for around a month.
"We expect Jackson to play AFL football this year," Cats coach Chris Scott said.
"He's a rookie at the moment, but we're expecting to need him.
"He's been good through the NAB series, so it doesn't make sense to us to have young players pushing through injuries that if we manage now we can get fixed within two or three weeks."
Sheringham's surgery comes just two days after Steve Johnson underwent a similar procedure.
Johnson, who was already suspended from the clash with the Hawks, is expected to miss Geelong's round two clash with North Melbourne and round three match against Carlton.
"There was no option to have surgery earlier than when he had it," Scott said. "His knee was fine leading into the practice game (against Collingwood).
"He had a minor incident that caused a little bit more damage, and there's no doubt in our mind that he could have played through it.
"But we take a conservative approach with all our injured players.
"The prognosis is somewhere between two weeks, best case, and four or five, worst case."
Emerging defender Cameron Guthrie, who Scott regards "to be clearly in our best 25", will also miss the match against Hawthorn and probably the clash with the Kangaroos.
Guthrie suffered a small calf tear in the warm-up before Geelong's final pre-season game against Collingwood at Simonds Stadium.
While his teammates were put through their paces in a strenuous training session on Thursday morning, Guthrie was restricted to running laps and doing stationary drills.
On a brighter note, ruckman Trent West, who had knee surgery a month ago, is looking more likely to take on the Hawks by the day.
West will be given until Sunday to prove his fitness.
"Medically, he's available," Scott said. "So the decision we make will be based around how he moves.
"He's had a very solid pre-season and he's naturally a very capable aerobic athlete, so that's working in his favour.
"We have option consisting of West, Walker and Blicavs. There's a chance we'll only play one of them, but likelihood is that we'll play two."
Daniel Menzel, who is fighting back from his third knee reconstruction, is building up his training load, but a return to action via the VFL is still sometime off.
"We'll be extremely cautious with Dan, the same way we have been with Steve Johnson," Scott said.
"We need to see him train a hell of a lot more before we can decide when he is going to play VFL footy.
"And we need to see some really good sustained performances at VFL level before we consider him for AFL level."
Jackson Sheringham is a midfielder in AFL Fantasy. He averaged 47 points in 2012. Register your team at our AFL Fantasy hub.
Adam McNicol covers Geelong news for AFL.com.au. Follow him on Twitter at @AFL_AdamMcNicol
