JAKE Melksham has been stuck on the sidelines since injuring his foot in Round 8, but the star Demon says his comeback is now in sight.  

“I am about two weeks away from returning to the VFL,” Melksham said on the club’s Inside Melbourne podcast.

“That’ll be a very similar program to what Neville (Jetta) just completed.

“He had a couple of quarters down at Casey and did a little bit of extra running to get his kilometre’s up and then obviously played last week against the Bulldogs.

“That’s what the plan is looking like for me, so hopefully I’ll be back in Round 20.”

It has been a frustrating 2019 season for Melksham, as he was hitting some form in the midfield prior to hurting his foot against Gold Coast – an injury that purely came down to bad luck.

“It was just a bit of a freakish accident," he said.

“I spun around and kicked the ball and I saw David Swallow coming across my body with his hands to smother it, but right underneath his hands was his leading leg.

“That’s where my foot collected his shin, but it was sort of like when you stub your toe wearing no shoes, it was like stubbing my whole foot.

“You’ve got a joint in the middle of your foot and my whole foot just bent forward and basically just stubbed the whole front of my foot.

“There’s a little crack underneath where the joint is, and it was better that there was a little crack and not a full break because I would have had to had surgery.”

The 27-year-old admits he thought he may have returned sooner from the injury, but the club has taken a cautious approach with the former Bomber.

“This has probably been a little bit longer than we’d planned as well, but with your feet, we know through Jack Viney and Aaron vandenBerg and a few others … you don’t want to muck around with them too much,” Melksham said.

“So we’ve just been making sure we get it right the first time and things are going fine.

“I’m just getting the rest of my body up to scratch now.”