Cathal McShane is unlikely to play competitive football before July after badly dislocating his ankle in Tyrone’s defeat to Galway on Sunday.
The All Star forward suffered the injury when landing awkwardly in the second half of the game in Tuam, which Tyrone lost by 19 points.
It’s believed that he will be unable to return to full training for around four months so, on that basis, the earliest he could hope to return to competitive action would likely be for the ‘Super 8s’, should Tyrone progress that far.
The first round of games in that phase of the Championship takes place on the weekend of July 11/12. At the very least, at appears as though he’ll miss all of the Ulster Championship, which Tyrone start with a difficult tie against holders Donegal on May 17.
While the recovery time for ankle dislocations vary and can be as little as eight weeks, the nature of McShane’s injury points to a significantly longer lay-off.
Tyrone followers had already resigned themselves to the likelihood of being without the 24-year-old this year in any event when it emerged that he was going on a two-week trial with AFL outfit Adelaide Crows, though he decided against a move down under earlier this month.
There was further good news as it emerged that Essendon player Conor McKenna was returning home from Australia though it’s offset by this setback, which could be crippling for Tyrone given McShane’s importance to Mickey Harte’s side.
The long-serving manager suffered the biggest defeat of his 17 seasons in charge last Sunday though when commenting immediately after the game, the injury to McShane was what bothered him most.
“It’s one of those things, players land a thousand times in a season and they get ok,” said Harte.
“Sometimes you just land in a bad way and it’s just so unfortunate because he made such an effort to decide to stay at home with us and now he’s gone for God knows how long.”
He added: “The thing saddens us most is Cathal’s injury because League points come and go but people’s health is more important and we’re so sorry that that happened to Cathal and we hope that he recovers very quickly.
“You can get very annoyed about football results and outcomes but there’s many more serious things in life and we all know that, and not to diminish what people think about football and how it affects them, but there are much more serious things.”
