Perth Glory defender Scott Neville could miss the rest of the Hyundai A-League season after it was confirmed he’d need surgery to repair a tear in the lateral ligament of his right knee.
Perth Glory defender Scott Neville could miss the rest of the Hyundai A-League season after it was confirmed he’d need surgery to repair a tear in the lateral ligament of his right knee.
Glory had been hopeful Neville would miss just one month of football after suffering the injury in training last week.
But a visit to the specialist on Tuesday confirmed the worst and the 22-year-old now requires a possible six-month recuperation period.
If Neville takes the entire six months, he will miss the rest of this Hyundai A-League season in a bitter blow for the player, who had a trial at English Championship club Portsmouth and League One outfit Sheffield Wednesday during the off-season.
“Obviously to receive the news today that I require surgery was disappointing,” Neville said.
“My focus is now on my rehab with the club physios and doctors so I can return to action as soon as possible.”
“Missing games for Perth Glory will be tough, but we have a great squad this season.”
Promising young defender Josh Risdon will replace Neville at right-back after playing against the Jets in a 2-0 loss last weekend.
Risdon was particularly impressive during Perth’s 1-1 draw with United Arab Emirates’ club Al Ahli a few months ago, dominating international-calibre players like former Wolfsburg striker Grafite.
Neville’s injury, though, is the latest in a series of blows to Perth’s defence that started when left-back Dean Heffernan opted to remain in China to play club football this season.
Along with this, in the last few weeks, another left-back in Evan Berger, suffered a serious hamstring injury that will keep him out of action for the next seven weeks.
But veteran defender Chris Coyne is confident the Glory’s new-look squad can deal with the setbacks.
“It doesn’t help losing players,” Coyne said. “You lose that depth in your squad then.”
“But like the manager’s said all along, we’ve got a lot of depth in each position now, so it mean we’ve got like-for-like replacements whereas in years previous we’ve had to change the whole team around.”
“So now it’s one-for-one,” he added. “Which is obviously good news for us, ’cause it means we’re not changing the format too much.”
