JOHN GALVIN WILL play no further part for Limerick in this year’s senior football championship as he prepares to have a cruciate ligament operation tomorrow, for the second time in just over twelve months, at the Sports Surgery Clinic in Santry in Dublin.
Galvin, who first injured his knee in a challenge match against Down in May last year, suffered a recurrence of that injury in a league game against Fermanagh earlier this year. He opted to postpone the operation and undergo a training programme in the hope of strengthening his knee.
There were signs that had been a success when he was able to rejoin the squad’s full training sessions in the build-up to their recent Munster semi-final defeat against Clare. But manager Maurice Horan told TheScore.ie this afternoon that the Croom man has now had to opt to repair his knee in order to have a better chance of being fit for the early stages of the 2013 season and in order to prevent problems from carrying out his day job as a farmer.
“He just has to get this done really. We thought that he was back with us before the Clare game. John tried really hard to come back after hurting it against Fermanagh and put in a huge amount of work in the background. But unfortunately he hasn’t been able to make the progress that he would have liked.
“Given his farming background as well, John needs to get the knee right. He had two options really to get the operation now and aim to be back by the start of the league next February. Or else wait until October to get the operation and he wouldn’t be properly back until the start of next summer. He’s decided to do it now and it makes sense really.”
Limerick also have to plan without defender Stephen Lavin for their round two qualifier tie on the weekend of July 14th-15th as he the primary school teacher from Adare has opted to go travelling to the USA for a month. Midfielder Tom Lee will be absent for the rest of the campaign as he has gone to New York for the remainder of the summer. Limerick will discover the identity of their qualifier opponents on Monday morning when the draw takes place live on TV3′s Ireland AM programme.
“We’ll have our eyes glued to the qualifier games over the weekend trying to figure out who we could be playing,” says Horan. “And then we’re going to be glad on Monday morning to find out who we’ll be facing. We’ll start our preparations then. We only came back properly this week and after the disappointment of the Clare game, we’re going to drive on to try and recover in the qualifiers.”
