The behaviour of the rockmass immediately surrounding an excavation (e.g. open pit slope, underground mine drift, etc.) will ultimately determine the overall performance of the excavation itself and the general operational safety, as well as providing the basis for support requirement decisions. Very often the near-field rockmass is significantly disturbed or damaged by blasting and redistribution of stresses. Any damage or disturbance to the near-field host rock will result in reduction to the strength and stiffness of the rockmass and consequently affect the stability of the excavation. In this paper a series of numerical analyses was conducted to study the behaviour of the near-field host rock, with a damaged rock zone around the excavation boundary. Typical underground mining drift geometry was used in building the models. The in-situ rockmass parameters are those typically encountered in the Swedish hard rockmass system, including the in-situ stresses. The results show that, the stability parameters; induced stresses and ground deformation, were observably affected by the presence of the damaged rock zone, as expected.