Wales flyhalf Gareth Anscombe will miss the majority of the 2020-21 season after suffering a setback in his recovery from a knee injury, head coach Wayne Pivac said.
Anscombe has not featured since sustaining an anterior cruciate ligament injury in a World Cup warm-up against England in August last year and has missed Wales' last 15 tests.
"Gareth will miss the majority, if not all, of this season," said Pivac. "He's had his surgery. He's had a little tidy up since the original surgery which has just set him back a little bit, but he's working hard and we're not going to rush him back.
"It's one of those injuries where ... it's not worth rushing him back for the sake of maybe a tour or part of a season. At this stage we're not putting any pressure on the player. We're saying, 'let's give it the season to get it right'.
"Now if he came right within that time frame then that's all the better, but there is no expectation on him to rush back for this season."
Pivac did not think the injury would spell the end of the 29-year-old's career.
"He's got leaders within our game and industry looking after him and they're saying he's got every chance of getting back to where he was," Pivac added.
"He's got to put a lot of hard work in but one thing about Gareth is that he's a very determined young man and he's determined to get back on the playing field as soon as he can."
(Reporting by Arvind Sriram in Bengaluru; Editing by Peter Rutherford)
