Hawthorn could be strengthened by the return of key forward Jarryd Roughead for Saturday’s AFL heavyweight stoush against Sydney.

The Hawks’ vice-captain has missed the recent victories against fellow top-eight sides Collingwood and Fremantle after having a melanoma removed from his lip.

The Hawthorn medical staff are monitoring the status of Roughead and defender Taylor Duryea, who was subbed out of Sunday’s big win over the Dockers with a shoulder injury.

Hawthorn’s football operations manager Chris Fagan said the picture would be clearer after Roughead met specialists late on Tuesday.

“A little bit depends on what they say as to whether or not he’ll be available to play on the weekend or whether he needs to take another week for that lip to heal up,” Fagan told the Hawthorn website.

“It’s a bit like Taylor Duryea – we’re not really going to know until Thursday, I would have thought.”

Key defender James Frawley faces at least one more week on the sidelines with a shoulder complaint.

In other news, Hawks champion Sam Mitchell will set out to eliminate the controversial corking action from his game.

Mitchell was handed a $1000 fine by the AFL for his knee to Fremantle midfielder Nat Fyfe’s thigh in Sunday’s win in Launceston.

“I can understand why it’s not a good look and it’s not a good thing for a game,” he said.

“The game has given me the feedback that I need to change the way I need to go about doing that.”

The incident with Fyfe was close enough to Mitchell’s previous unpunished run-in with Adelaide captain Taylor Walker, for the Crows forward to tweet “Lightning strikes twice”.

Mitchell’s teammate Josh Gibson said the two incidents didn’t make Mitchell a serial offender.

“Mitch has played the game for a long time … I think 14 years and we haven’t seen a lot of it,” he said.

“Now that it’s happened twice in such a short part of time, he’ll go away and work on it.”