Essendon’s Dyson Heppell has suffered an injury setback with the star midfielder forced to undergo knee surgery.

After experiencing soreness in his knee on Monday, Heppell was quickly booked in for what the club described as minor surgery on Tuesday.

“Dyson will have an arthroscopy to remove a small piece of cartilage which had become a loose body,” club doctor Bruce Reid told Essendon’s website.

“Julian Feller will operate on Dyson this morning and we expect he’ll be back training in two weeks time.”

Heppell, 22, is coming off a brilliant season where he took out the club’s best-and-fairest award and was named in the All-Australian team for the first time.