NSW Waratahs and Australian Rugby have received welcoming news after centre Lalakai Foketi was cleared of major spinal damage after Thursday's neck injury.
Foketi was taken to hospital after sustaining a knock in an innocuous ruck situation at training.
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Waratahs coach Darren Coleman revealed whilst the initial scans were encouraging, they will still need to have further scans to determine the severity of the injury before laying out a return pathway.
"The CT scan was positive," Coleman said to reporters. "He had that yesterday and that showed no major spinal damage or no vertebral cracks or things like that.
"I'm obviously not a doctor, but he's just got to stay in a little bit longer now to have an MRI. That'll determine what sort of soft-tissue damage there is around ligaments (and) if there's been any bleeding around the spinal cord, those sorts of things.
"He's by no stretch out of the woods yet, but the first news is all pretty positive that there won't be anything too permanent or debilitating.
"He'll have the MRI today. All going well, he'll be in a neck brace and get released today, and he's pretty keen to get home and then he'll start his road to recovery from that. I really hope for La's sake that it's not a career-threatening thing but if you've got instability in that area, risk and reward needs to be taken into consideration."
The injury will mean Max Jorgensen comes into the starting side for the Waratahs at fullback, shifting Joey Walton into the centres.
Jack Bowen comes onto the bench as Coleman remains optimistic the incident will not affect the team ahead of Saturday's match.
"(It) hits home to me, particularly what these guys put themselves through not only each week, but each training run," he admits.
"There's a lot contact involved in our sport and all it needs is what happened with La just to land on the ground a slightly wrong way, a push from behind or whatever it may be - and it can be catastrophic.
"It was a bit of an ordinary scene for him, and everyone was really worried at the time around what the extent of his injuries were and it happened in front of his teammates. It wasn't great, It was confronting for the team when you see your mate go like that, and it sort of hits home."
Queensland Reds co-captain and Wallabies teammate Tate McDermott led the shows of support for Foketi as he prepares to be released from hospital today.
"It’s terrible when you receive news like that. Obviously, I played a little bit of footy with La last year. I’ve known him for a number of years and send our best wishes as an organisation but also from a friend point of view to La and his family," McDermott said.
