Heal went under the knife this month to repair injured cartilage in his right knee ahead of the South Dragons’ second assault on the NBL.

Hammer injured his knee just one month into the 2006-‘07 season, playing out the year with occasional soreness and swelling in the joint.

“(The injury) happened a month into the season so for the last three months it was a bit of a problem,” Heal said.

While the South Dragons star will be out of action for some weeks, he is well on the road to recovery.

“They went in to fix up the cartilage but it ended up being a different part of the cartilage to what they thought.

“They found some little bone fragments and things like that in there as well so (recovery) is probably going to take an extra month to what they thought, but there’s been no problems, it just needed to be cleaned up and that sort of explained why there was so much swelling during the year.

“But the operation was great, (the knee) is coming up really well.

Heal jets off to the United States next week to spend time with coaching staff at the San Antonio Spurs. He will resume training on his return in a bid to regain full fitness ahead of the Dragons’ pre-season launch on July 1.

“I can’t start training for probably another three or four weeks but it feels really good,” Heal said.

“I’ll be 100 per cent hopefully by the time pre-season training starts, it’s just strengthening and a matter of time now but it’s really on track.”