Kangaroos coach Jay Everall yesterday said scans this week had confirmed McCormack had suffered a rupture of an anterior cruciate ligament in his knee.

The former Penshurst onballer suffered the injury at training a fortnight before round one, although did not know how severe the setback was until this week.

“He’ll be out for the season. He didn’t take to the field last weekend (against Deakin University) and had scans during the week,” Everall said.

“It turns out he’s ruptured or got a tear in his ACL. He’ll need a knee reconstruction. It’s very disappointing, that’s for sure, footy can be cruel like that.”

Everall said McCormack loomed as “one of our better players”. The pair played together at the Mininera and District league Bombers the past few years.

“From a team perspective it’s a big blow for us. If we were able to lose not too many more, we have a few options to go through the midfield,” Everall said.

“We’ve got (Ben) Jansen, (Shaun) McDougall, (Marcus) Askew, (Brent) Goonan.

“It’s just unfortunate it limits us a bit in terms of the number of quality guys we can run through there.”

Russells Creek suffered a 78-point defeat to Deakin University in round one but has the chance to bounce back against Nirranda at Mack Oval today.

Everall highlighted a lack of fitness and inaccurate kicking as factors in the defeat. But he was upbeat about the performances of a handful of new faces.

South Warrnambool recruit Ben O’Rourke “was superb” in the midfield while first-year senior Patrick O’Brien and Merrivale recruit Tahi Pompey were effective.

“The more we play the better we’ll get. We’ll set ourselves to be as competitive as we can this week with the end goal of winning the match,” Everall said.