Munster to give Jack Crowley time to recover from 'very, very rare' injury

Munster boss Clayton McMillan was speaking exclusively to the Irish Examiner.

Jack Crowley signs an autograph for a young fan. Pic: INPHO/Ben Brady

Munster will give Jack Crowley as much time as he needs to make a full recovery from a rare lower limb vascular injury as they and Ireland face a further four months without their first-choice fly-half.

Munster boss Clayton McMillan was speaking to the Irish Examiner ahead of the province’s opening pre-season fixture at La Rochelle on Friday evening, when he discussed the decision to stand down Crowley, 26, to fully rehabilitate the injury which has sidelined him since April 25.

The number 10 was absent for Munster’s end-of-season run-in to the URC quarter-finals and Ireland’s three-Test Nations Championship tour to Australia and New Zealand in July. Now he is set to miss November’s home Nations Championship Tests and the finals weekend at Twickenham as well as Munster’s opening two rounds of the Champions Cup pool campaign.

Crowley’s issues began with what was thought to be a dead leg sustained in the pre-game warm-up at home to Ulster on April 25. He was withdrawn from the matchday squad and did not face Connacht the following week and though he was named to start the final regular season game against the Lions, the playmaker was once again forced to withdraw ahead of kick-off when the symptoms returned.

“We got a diagnosis of his injury basically at the end of the season,” McMillan told the Irish Examiner on Thursday. “It's very, very rare which is why it was very hard to detect.

“And there's not many cases, no real precedents and not a lot of people have seen this particular injury. So all you can do is give him time and that's what we're doing.

“It's actually quite relieving for him I think and for us too. People probably wonder whether we were just playing silly buggers at the back end of the season, especially when he was named in the team and then would come out of a warm-up but that's just how random the injury was.

“And now he's got a diagnosis and we've just given him as much time as he needs. So at this stage, put no pressure on him up to the Christmas window and if he continues to show progress, then there's a good chance that he could be back but he may not either. But the situation where he was being named in teams meant he was kind of maintaining a fitness and a level of training.” 

McMillan said Crowley had now been “completely removed from training” and added: “I think that's just medical advice to give him the best chance of accelerating his recovery. I think if you asked him, he'd probably feel like he could get up and start running around.

“It certainly looks like it but if you follow the experts’ advice, he's a diligent man so he'll do that. But the nature of the injury was such that he'd feel fine and then the feeling of a dead leg sensation would come, he’d lose all of his power. He could get through a whole training and be fine. He could get through a whole warm-up and be fine and then get into the sheds and have it just appear.

“So that's sort of what we were dealing with. But yeah, the positive thing is that he's got a diagnosis and is on the road to recovery.”