CYRIL Rioli remains on track to return to the field after Hawthorn's bye next weekend.
The 23-year-old last played in round five when he suffered a high-grade hamstring strain against North Melbourne.
It was predicted the small forward wouldn't play until after the Hawks' round 11 bye, with the club to take a cautious approach given his history with hamstring injuries.
That estimate remains accurate, with coach Alastair Clarkson predicting Rioli would return either against the Blues on June 14 or the Eagles a week later on June 21.
"He won't be too far away," Clarkson said.
"We've just got to make sure. We're winning games of footy without him, which is really fortunate for us because we rely so heavily on him; he's a very, very important player to our structure.
"We just want to make sure he's right when he does come back.
"He's tracking along really well and he'll be somewhere around the Carlton or West Coast game – we'll just wait and see on making sure he's ticked every box so when we do get him back, he's back for the duration."
Clarkson said the players would get away from the club for "a couple of days" in the middle of next week ahead of their clash with the Blues.
Meanwhile, Lance Franklin's future came up again this week with a report on Thursday night's The Footy Show detailing a potential offer from Greater Western Sydney worth about $9 million over six years.
Franklin has put off contract talks until the end of the season; a decision that was made public in February this year.
Clarkson said Franklin's demeanour had remained steady throughout the speculation about his future.
"We sat down at the start of the year and part of it is the decision of what 'Bud' wants to do in terms of leave his contract until the end of year, and then there's the discussion then of how we're going to handle it," he said.
"Our attitude has always been, as long as he's contracted to our footy club, all that we ask you to do, 'Bud', is prepare and play as well as you can for the Hawthorn footy club.
"That's what we've been really pleased about. His demeanour hasn't changed one bit in terms of his attitude to that.
"All the contract stuff and off field stuff will work itself out in due course."
Jennifer Phelan is a reporter for AFL Media. Follow her on Twitter @AFL_JenPhelan.
