St Kilda defender Matt Maguire says he is young enough to have a satisfying AFL career, even if it takes him a full year to recover from the latest in a series of leg and foot injuries.

The 23-year-old last week learnt his season was over, after breaking a metatarsal bone in his left foot while playing against Richmond, continuing a terrible run.

It started when he broke both his left tibia and fibula in a horrific on-field collision in 2006.

His recovery from that injury was hampered by the onset of compartment syndrome, which required a lengthy spell in hospital.

Last season, stress fractures in his left foot restricted him to 10 games, before he injured the same foot last week.

"I don't think you could say anything's unrelated, it's definitely a different bone but it's not unrelated," Maguire said of the series of injuries.

But he was confident he would eventually make it back for an extended run in the AFL, hopefully for the start of the 2009 season.

"That's why I keep persisting and keep giving myself an opportunity and putting myself in that position," Maguire said.

"If I didn't think I was going to be able to get back there I wouldn't train up and do all the hard work for a couple of games.

"If I thought I was no chance I'd just give it away because what's the use in training and doing all that hard work just to come back and play one or two games.

"It's something that being the age of 23, I'm still quite young ... even if worst-case scenario, I had a full year to get over this injury ... I'd only be coming back at the age of 24 and still have at least you'd say five or six very good years ahead of me."

One small positive from the latest operation was that surgeons were able to take the opportunity to clean up some issues lingering from the compartment syndrome, as well as remove some bone spurs.

Remarkably, Maguire played out the game in which he sustained the latest injury, being cleared by doctors to return to the ground and it was at his later request that he was X-rayed.

"With a little bit more review of it after the game and with all doctors and physios on hand they thought it might be a good idea to have an X-ray, or I actually requested the X-ray on that night, so we just went to emergency at the Epworth (Hospital) so I'd be able to sleep," he said.

Even on the way to the hospital, Maguire said he suspected the worst, given the thorough knowledge of his body attained through his experience with injury.

He said he now planned to spend some weeks away from the club, before again starting the long rehabilitation path.

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