THE immediate future of Bomber Scott Lucas appears grim, with his coach Matthew Knights conceding the star forward has not made a lot of progress with knee and back injuries.

Lucas hasn’t played since the Bombers’ round 17 victory over the Pies and Knights indicated he was unlikely to run out for the Bombers again this season.

“He’s had three or four weeks off and he hasn’t improved a lot," Knights said of Luca.

"He’s attempted to come out and train. I think before the West Coast game he was really keen to get up for that game but he couldn’t quite get there. He was only 75/80 per cent so we chose not to go with him. And I would think it is extremely unlikely that he would play (again this season). He’s still holding on to the hope that he may play in potentially the last game but it’s highly unlikely.”

Despite Jason Laycock suffering from a floating bone in his ankle, Knights insisted that the injury was not to blame for his poor form.

“It hasn’t been preventing him playing or covering the ground, so I think Jason is big enough to say that his form line is his form line," was Knights' frank assessment.

"There’s no excuse in regard to injury. But we felt that after the game (against Adelaide) it got to a stage that it would start to impede on his performance if he continued to play … so obviously that will probably be it for the season.”

The coach also admitted that he was worried about the injury-prone Courtney Dempsey.

“I am concerned because Courtenay hasn’t had a run at it since he arrived at the club so that’s concerning as a coach. I can’t concern myself or wonder whether that’s going to be the case for the future because it may not be … a lot of guys had trouble early in their careers and went on to play eight or ten straight years. I don’t think it’s a precursor to what will happen with his whole career. It’s just what we’re dealing with at the moment.”

Knights admitted that the frequent occurrence of injury to the squad’s younger players has become frustrating.

“Probably the greater percentage of injuries this year have been to our younger players. What’s also concerning to us is that we’ve spent an enormous amount of time managing their loads to make sure they’re not doing too much or too little … it is frustrating because one of my key goals at the start of the year was to get exposure for the younger players on the team and make sure that they’re heading in the right direction.”