Sloane had missed the past three games with a sprained right foot and then strained the Lisfranc ligament in the same foot on Wednesday.

“How quickly that settles down, we don’t know,” Crows coach Don Pyke said on Friday.

“We’re thinking a couple of weeks and we will take it from there.”

Sloane, Adelaide’s vice-captain, has been told by specialists to rest his latest injury for a fortnight.

The influential midfielder suffered the strain when changing direction at training while trying to prove his recovery from his initial injury.

“The early indications aren’t that severe and that is why we said we will give him a couple of weeks and see how it settles,” Pyke said.

“Talking to him yesterday and this morning, he has recovered pretty well from a pretty innocuous movement.

“So that is really a strong indicator that he’s not going to go all the way back to what he was, say, four or five weeks ago.”

But Pyke conceded foot injuries were often tricky to treat.

“Certainly that area and the foot, there’s lots of ligaments and tendons and muscles in there,” he said.

“So the mid-foot sprain he had, he has now got a little bit of awareness in the Lisfranc area.

“I wouldn’t say that he’s not without a chance of playing in two weeks … but he is such an important player for us.

“And we had taken the time to get him right – he was jumping out of his skin on Wednesday at training.”

– AAP