FREMANTLE defender Garrick Ibbotson is confident his recent shoulder surgery will solve the injury problems that blighted his 2014 season.
Ibbotson had an operation on his right shoulder nine weeks ago after suffering multiple dislocations during the season.
The 26-year-old defender dislocated his shoulder in round three against Hawthorn and again in the semi-final against Port Adelaide. He bravely returned to play on against the Power after having his shoulder popped back into place by the Fremantle medical staff.
The operation, known as the Latarjet procedure, is the same that teammate Nat Fyfe had on his left shoulder in 2012. Fyfe's recent injury, and subsequent surgery, on his right AC joint is nowhere near as serious.
Ibbotson said he had confidence in his shoulder and he is close to returning to full training, given the standard recovery time is 12 weeks.
"I obviously haven't got through the full recovery yet but so far so good," Ibbotson said at a press conference on Sunday.
"I'll be out of contact work for a little while, but I'll be into some footy drills hopefully next week."
Ibbotson has been plagued by injury over the past two seasons. In 2013 he was one of the in-form defenders in the competition until he was struck down with an Achilles problem in August, which required surgery and ruled him out of the finals series.
"It's a little bit frustrating," he said of his ill fortune.
"Obviously you can't control injury a lot of the time with footy, and that's just part of the game. Everybody goes through it.
"I've just had a bit of a rough time in the last couple of years, but hopefully I'm out the other end."
Ibbotson took part in a solid running session while the Dockers squad trained at Fremantle Oval on Monday.
Paul Duffield, David Mundy and Colin Sylvia joined Ibbotson in a Fartlek running session, which involves continuous laps with changes of speed throughout.
Fremantle veterans Matthew Pavlich, Aaron Sandilands and Luke McPharlin all trained fully on Monday morning but there were a number of notable absentees from the main training session.
Fyfe is still recovering for his minor shoulder surgery while Michael Johnson, Lachie Neale, Cam Sutcliffe, Zac Clarke and Anthony Morabito are all being managed before Christmas due to various injury issues in the off-season.
Michael Barlow, Michael Walters, Nick Suban, Ryan Crowley and Jonathon Griffin were also absent but it is normal practice for players to have their pre-season programs individually tailored at this time of year.
It is expected that the Dockers will have almost a full complement of players in full training by January.
