Tyrone boss Malachy O’Rourke says key All Star defender Padraig Hampsey is still “a few weeks” away from a return to the playing field for them.

The 2021 All-Ireland winning captain underwent surgery after suffering an injury to his shoulder back in August and has missed the Red Hands’ first four Allianz League outings as a result.

The Coalisland clubman has been involved in parts of the team warm up during some of those games and, speaking to media after the defeat to Kerry last weekend, O’Rourke provided an update on his squad’s injuries which have seen the likes of Hampsey, Conor Meyler, Conall Devlin, Lorcan McGarrity, Cormac Quinn and Nathan McCarron yet to make an appearance this season.

“Well, we don’t know, we have to see how they are during the week, they obviously haven’t done much over the last few weeks, we just have to be very careful that we are not rushing fellows back in and they start picking up injuries,” the Fermanagh native said.

“Paudie won’t be back for a while yet, but he is getting close, and he’s doing a serious bit of work, but it will be a few weeks yet.” 

On the return of Darragh Canavan, who scored 1-4 off the bench, and others to the team, O’Rourke added: “It was great to have the lads back, and the other fellows are in there as well, so it’s about getting them up to speed.

“There is nothing easy there, we would be pleased with a lot of things, with the way the boys dug in there, and against a fairly strong wind in  the second half, we played some good football, but overall - just not being able to finish the game off, losing control of it in the last 10 minutes, different aspects of play, it isn’t good enough if we want to be beating the top teams, so we have a lot of work to do."

Tweet

Most Read Stories