MELBOURNE will be without two players for the rest of the AFL Women’s season due to injury: Meg Downie and Stephanie De Bortoli.

Women’s football operations manager Debbie Lee said Downie, who suffered concussion during last Saturday night’s win over Collingwood at Ikon Park, had also ruptured her hamstring moments before being knocked out.

“We picked up Meg as a free agent and we were really pleased to pick her up, given the character she showed and her commitment to footy,” she told melbournefc.com.au.

“She has a really strong ability to become a great defender for the Melbourne footy club and I think we saw that in the first two rounds of the AFLW season.

“Unfortunately, she’s also hurt her hamstring, which will set her back quite a bit and she’ll no longer take part in the season.”

Lee said it was an interesting situation when Downie told the medicos of her hamstring injury.

“When Meg was regaining consciousness, she actually mentioned to the medical team that her hamstring was injured,” she said.

“The medical team thought she was still concussed when talking about it, but Meg was quite right.

“We got an MRI scan on Monday and unfortunately the results weren’t what we were hoping.”

Lee said De Bortoli recently underwent surgery to repair an Achilles tendon injury.

“Steph had surgery last week and is now recovering from her Achilles injury. She’s recovering well at home and will be rested for two weeks and she’s out for the season as well, which is really disappointing,” she said.

“Both girls are both positive around their experience with the Melbourne Football Club and they’re both equally positive about what they can add, as they’re very much part of the team still.”

“It’s really unfortunate. When you’re playing elite football and pushing your body, unfortunately these injuries can occur. We’re fully supporting both athletes in their recovery and they’re still a big part of the team.”

Lee said Melbourne could activate the top-up player rule once its list was below 24 fit players.

“If we’ve got 24 healthy athletes, we can’t activate the top-up regulation, so we’ll monitor that. We’ll look at how healthy our list is and if we need to activate it, we will,” she said.