Fremantle are bracing to be without Brennan Cox for at least the next three months with a hamstring injury, amid the brutal toll of their round-one win over the Brisbane Lions.

Cox, Oscar McDonald (knee) and Karl Worner (concussion) all failed to finish the Dockers’ surprise 23-point victory at Optus Stadium on Sunday.

Versatile tall Cox suffered a serious right hamstring injury as he led for a pass during the final quarter and tumbled to the turf.

He saw a surgeon on Monday and faces a long road back to action.

“It looks like he’ll need surgery on that hamstring to be able to repair it,” Fremantle coach Justin Longmuir told Fox Footy on Monday night.

“I’m not a doctor but it’s somewhere between 12 to 15 weeks, I would imagine.”

New recruit McDonald went down clutching at his left knee in the dying stages of the third quarter after suffering an ugly hyperextension while landing.

“He’s got a little bit going on in that knee,” Longmuir said.

“I’m not going to say what it could be, because it could be a number of things at the moment. I’ve got my fingers and toes crossed for him.

“It was his first game at the club and he was playing a really important role for us and has had a super pre-season. Hopefully we get a better result there.”

Worner was taken off the ground on a stretcher during the third quarter after copping a sickening incidental hit to the head while trying to mark a ball.

“He’ll enter the concussion protocols and we’ll take it day by day with him and see how long it takes,” Longmuir said.

“We all know that concussion is a tricky one so we’ll take it easy on him for the first few days and see how he responds.”

Brisbane also suffered blows in the same game but are yet to confirm the extent of Darcy Gardiner’s suspected posterior cruciate ligament (PCL) injury and Conor McKenna’s hamstring issue.

Meanwhile, Essendon coach Brad Scott confirmed he will have to make three forced changes to his team for Saturday night’s clash with unbeaten Sydney, revealing Matt Guelfi will miss with a calf injury.

“Doctors tell me it’s minor but it’s major enough to miss,” Scott told Fox Footy on Monday night.

Guelfi joins key defender Zach Reid (hamstring strain) on the sidelines after last Saturday’s 24-point win over Hawthorn, while the Bombers have accepted Mason Redman’s one-match ban for striking Hawk Jai Newcombe.

Highly-rated Reid was the 10th overall pick at the 2020 draft but has managed just nine senior games while battling a series of injuries.

“We’ve been ultra conservative with him (throughout his career) and he’s got a minor hamstring,” Scott said.

“It’s not serious but for Reidy at the moment our view is there’s no such thing as a minor hamstring for him.

“We’ve got to be really, really patient with him and it’s really frustrating.”

With the till topped up to the tune of $3.2 million, courtesy of a joint venture (JV) deal with budding producer Delta Lithium, Reach Resources has landed boots on ground at its Wabli Creek project in its hunt for niobium and rare earths in Western Australia’s Gascoyne region.

It comes after the company completed a tenement-wide soil geochemical survey over its Wabli Creek tenure late last year, lighting up a string of compelling anomalies indicative of niobium, rare earths and lithium mineral systems.

A total of 1489 samples were collected across the two tenements that make up the Wabli Creek project, returning promising assays peaking at 3860 parts per million total rare earth oxides (TREO). Results were interpreted by expert consulting geochemistry firm Sugden Geoscience, which identified 16 priority targets that warrant further evaluation.

The company says the top three targets make up a semi-continuous zone of strong anomalism extending more than 4km in length.

Reach raised more than a few eyebrows last year with the results of a surface sampling program that yielded a plethora of high-grade results, including a whopping 14.3 per cent niobium oxide and 6.7 per cent tantalum oxide. The samples also recorded up to 3689 parts per million TREO, of which 70.3 per cent was heavy rare earth oxides (HREO).

Encouragingly, the samples collected by Reach throw weight behind a slew of historical rock chip samples headlined by 32 per cent niobium oxide and 5.04 per cent tantalum oxide.

Clearly, Niobium and REE are an exciting part of the future battery-driven society and we think we have a real opportunity to capitalise on this at Wabli Creek. Following the announcement of our JV with Delta Lithium on our Morrissey Hill and Camel Hill projects and the $3.2M cash injection, this enables us more time to focus on this project and our Paynes’s Find Gold project in the Murchison, particularly whilst the gold price is so good.

Management previously reported that the source of the high‐grade niobium and HREO results was confirmed as a rare earths pegmatite swarm with a niobium, yttrium, fluorine geochemical signature. The company has now kicked off a field campaign that will include detailed geological mapping and rock chip sampling designed to further evaluate the source of the soil anomalies.

Eager to test the bedrock with the drill bit, Reach is also meeting with the Wajarri traditional owners to progress the heritage surveys required before kicking off drilling operations.

Located in WA’s emerging battery metal Gascoyne province, Reach has etched out a noteworthy parcel of prospective tenements that also includes Morrissey Hill and Camel Hill, nestled amongst prominent lithium players – Delta and Minerals260.

Sharing the neighbourhood with Delta’s developing Yinnethara lithium project has paid dividends for Reach with the two companies last week entering into an earn-in and JV agreement.

Under the deal, Delta agreed to a non-refundable cash payment of $3.2 million and can earn an initial 51 per cent interest by spending $3 million on exploration within the first two years. If Delta earns the 51 per cent interest, the parties have agreed to form an unincorporated JV to further explore the tenements making up the two projects.

Delta can then earn a further 29 per cent interest under a stage-two earn-in, taking it up to 80 per cent, upon spending a further $6 million worth of exploration in the two years after stage-one completion.

With the gold price hurtling to a new Australian high of $3308 per ounce last week, Reach is casting a wistful eye on its Primrose gold project near Paynes Find, about 430km north-east of Perth.

Located within close trucking distance to multiple gold mills, Primrose has an inferred mineral resource of 1.035 million tonnes at 3.2 grams per tonne gold for 105,000 ounces, including a higher-grade component of 582,000 tonnes at 4.7g/t for 87,000 ounces. The company says significant upside exists around the current resource envelope, which remains open along strike and at depth.

Reach has squared away a lucrative JV deal with Delta that guarantees steady exploration for the next two years in the Gascoyne, while providing a bank balance boost in a notoriously difficult capital market. While gold producers are no doubt pulling out the hedge books, Reach has hedged its own bets with a gamut of intriguing battery metal projects in the Gascoyne, bookended by its Primrose gold project in the Murchison gold hub.

Is your ASX-listed company doing something interesting? Contact: matt.birney@wanews.com.au

NRL head of football Graham Annesley has defended the match review committee’s decision to suspend Storm halfback Jahrome Hughes for one match, declaring “it’s never acceptable to push a referee”.

Hughes was hit with a grade two contrary conduct charge for making contact with referee Chris Butler during Saturday’s epic win over the Warriors, and while most people thought he did nothing wrong, the Storm accepted the ban, not willing to risk their star playmaker missing two games if found guilty.

The representative playmaker was trying to tackle Rocco Berry and pushed Butler out of the way, with Hughes copping a suspension even though Panthers star Jarome Luai was only fined last year for shoving a match official.

“In our game, for as long as it’s been played, it’s never been acceptable to push a referee,” Annesley said.

“There will often be incidents where referees and players will have some kind of physical contact because they bump into each other due to circumstances.

“But it’s not acceptable to physically push a referee out of the way, regardless of the circumstances.

“We have to ensure that the match officials are protected.

“No one is suggesting for a second that there was anything malicious in what took place, but whether it’s to make a tackle, whether it’s to save a try of whatever it is, you can’t take a decision to move the referee out of the way.”

There was another incident on Friday night where the Bulldogs were denied a try because referee Ziggy Przeklasa-Adamski blocked Braydon Trindall from tackling the much larger Viliame Kikau.

The Bulldogs weren’t happy with the decision, and it turns out they were right.

“I don’t believe this try should have been overturned,” Annesley said.

“The referee has to be somewhere on the field, he can’t just disappear.

“If we allow that try to be disallowed on that basis, we’ll have players making contact with the referees in multiple instances where they’ll be claiming that they’d been disadvantaged and asking for tries to be overturned.”

There was another controversial moment in Manly on Sunday afternoon when the hosts were awarded a try even though it looked like Tom Trbojevic had taken out James Tedesco as he was contesting a kick.

But Annesley says the referees got it right, with Victor Radley playing a role in the collision and that Trbojevic had every right to be in a position to contest the ball.

Tedesco was asked about it roughly 200 metres away at Roosters training two hours before Annesley’s explanation.

“Watching it back, I feel like contact was made before I was able to catch the ball, and he didn’t have a contest for the ball – it was just contact on me before I could have a fair catch,” the fullback said, with the NRL sending a video to all clubs earlier this year to explain rule tweaks for kick obstructers.

“I asked Todd (referee Todd Smith) the question numerous times and he said they checked it, but they didn’t really go to the Bunker or anything to have an in-depth look at it so that’s a bit disappointing.

“It’s the heat of the battle so it’s hard, but they’ve definitely sent videos of those types of things, and they’ve been penalised.”

China’s factory output and investment grew more strongly than expected at the start of the year, as Beijing targets an ambitious annual economic growth goal of around 5 per cent.

Industrial output rose 7 per cent in January-February from the same period a year earlier, the National Bureau of Statistics said Monday, faster a median estimate of 5.2 per cent rise by economists surveyed by Bloomberg. Retail sales increased 5.5 per cent, roughly in line with projections.

Growth in fixed-asset investment was 4.2 per cent in the first two months of the year, much stronger than a forecast 3.2 per cent gain. Investment in property development fell 9 per cent, remaining a major drag on the economy.

The urban jobless rate was 5.3 per cent, up from 5.1 per cent as of the end of December.

The surprisingly strong numbers are the latest evidence the world’s second-largest economy gained traction after policymakers ramped up stimulus late last year. They add to positive data showing China’s export growth exceeded expectations at the start of 2024.