Western Bulldogs coach Luke Beveridge not confident Jamarra Ugle-Hagan will be playing AFL anytime soon

Western Bulldogs coach Luke Beveridge has conceded it will be “some time” before troubled forward Jamarra Ugle-Hagan even gets close to an AFL return and he’s not even confident the 22-year-old will be at training next week as the battle to bring him “back in to the tent” continues.

The playing status of the former No.1 draft pick has loomed large over the Bulldogs’ pre-season, with personal issues moving the club to put Ugle-Hagan on a “flexible” training arrangement that the coach said could be hard to judge from the outside.

Having skipped planned sessions earlier this week, Ugle-Hagan trained with his teammates on Thursday ahead of the club’s season-opening clash with North Melbourne, a sighting that didn’t move Beveridge to change his expectations of the challenging road that lies ahead.

“What we try to do is normalise your (outsiders) thinking around the flexibility of our thinking that he might be here and he might not,” Beveridge said on Friday.

“I understand with the season now here that you’re all expecting him to be here all the time. There’s a big chance that he won’t.

“Now we’re trying to make sure everyone understands that and hopefully in a month or two everyone is reporting he’s had a really good block of four or five weeks, there might be a chance he’s playing state league footy (VFL).

“We can’t control the narrative and the house around Marra, but I will say is I can’t guarantee next week that he’s here every session or the week after.

“Its pretty complex. You can’t pin it down, there’s too much uncertainty.”

But while the situation with Ugle-Hagan remains fluid, Beveridge was adamant that from an “integrity point of view” there was no chance of a return to the AFL side anytime soon.

Amid reports of relationship breakdowns with teammates and with Beveridge, who has known Ugle-Hagan since he was a teenage member of the club’s academy, the coach said things remained “grey”.

“Ultimately, it doesn’t matter who it is, if you are making concerted choices from an integrity point of view about who is out there with you on the battlefield, it’s going to take a while,” Beveridge said.

“I can’t give any detail around what that expectation might be. It’s a bit grey at the moment.

“What’s transpired over recent times, things have changed in relation to his being on campus, so as a club and as a team moving forward, now we’re trying to bring him back in the tent.

“There’s no guarantee that’s going to happen in the short term.”

The Bulldogs will start the season significantly undermanned, without captain Marcus Bontempelli and a host of key players, including star defender Liam Jones.

Beveridge is also in the final year of a contract but said he was “really comfortable” with the situation.

“Each season for me is a brand new project,” he said.

“There’s a number of key deliverables … some objectives you are looking to achieve, then the ongoing monitoring is always there.

“Nothing for me in what transpires in the coming weeks is a leverage point for my future.”