ST KILDA has revealed that it gambled on radical foot-shaping surgery for ruckman Michael Gardiner last year in a bid to underpin the club's premiership hopes for 2008.

Gardiner, who will play his second comeback match for St Kilda against Carlton at Telstra Dome tonight, remains the AFL's medical test case for groundbreaking knee surgery on a posterior cruciate ligament now that Brisbane Lions ruckman Beau McDonald has retired.

But the Saints have also confirmed that the 28-year-old's nagging foot problems, which plagued him while at West Coast, were the result of a second metatarsophalangeal joint capsulitis and joint dysfunction caused by his second toe being too long for his big toe.

The deformity is understood to have meant that the 103-kilogram ruckman was distributing weight to the wrong parts of his left foot, causing constant pain.

Leading Melbourne sports physician Peter Larkins said the metatarsal osteotomy operation was used generally for people with deformed feet. He believed Gardiner was the first AFL player to have it done.

Larkins said the bone-cutting surgery, which has a high success rate, was used for many parts of the body, including patients who had a limb longer than the other. "Osteotomy simply means reshaping the bone and sometimes it's done in legs for people with arthritis of the knee, sometimes it's done for hip disease or and it can be done for people with badly shaped wrists," he said.

St Kilda football general manager Matthew Drain said the club was pleased, but cautious, with Gardiner's progress. "Certainly from where he's come in the last year and a half and not having played a lot, it's all building blocks for Michael," Drain said.