West Coast AFLW vice-captain Dana Hooker has revealed a mishap involving a bag of hotdog buns and a knife was responsible for her season-ending foot injury.

The reigning club champion was ruled out for the rest of the 2021 season just days after the Eagles’ round-one loss to Adelaide, when a knife slipped off her kitchen bench while she was making lunch for her daughter and cut her foot, lacerating a tendon which required surgery.

“During that week off when we went into lockdown, I was preparing some lunch for my daughter, she had a special request for some of those little frankfurt sausages in a hotdog bun... just as I reached out to grab the bag of buns I knocked a knife that was on the bench,” Hooker told the club’s website.

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“It fell straight off onto my foot. I was a little bit shocked at the time when it happened. I was pretty calm, I think reflecting on it I was calmer than I thought I’d be.

“I looked down at my foot and it was gaping and I could see white. So I thought ‘that’s not too good’.

“I called the team doc straight away, went straight from there to go see a surgeon.”

Hooker said there was initially hope it might be just a small injury, before it was discovered a tendon in her foot had been completely severed, resulting in a long-term injury.

“When we got there the surgeon was pretty optimistic because I had some good movement in the toe, so he actually thought that there was a potential that when he went in to operate the next morning and have a look to see what was going on with the tendon that it might have only just got the tendon,” she said.

“In which case if it was only less than 50 per cent lacerated we could've just sutured it up and I would’ve been OK to go probably within a week or two.

“Then I woke up on the back of that surgery to some not so good news from the surgeon, who came in and said when they opened it up it was not good, the tendon was fully lacerated and that meant that my season was done. And it was at least around a three-month injury.

“It was pretty devastating at the time. I was quite emotional. I’m not an emotional person, but waking up, particularly coming off a general and finding out that, yeah it was emotional in hospital.”

Hooker is aiming for a return to full training by the middle of the year when the high-performance academy is under way again.