St Ledger escapes surgery but O’Shea adds to Trap woes

There was mixed injury news in defence for GiovanniTrapattoni yesterday as it was confirmed that long-termabsentee Sean St Ledger will not now need surgery to a troublesome hamstring problem, but a strain in the same area looks likely to keep John O’Shea out of Ireland’s February friendly with Poland.

St Ledger has missedIreland’s last three games and hasn’t played at all since Oct 6 when he incurred the injury in his Leicester City team’s 2-0 home win over Bristol Rovers. The issue prompted a trip to the specialist doctor Hans-Wilhelm Muller-Wohlfahrt, whose work has attracted patients such as the Bayern Munich squad and Bono. The German decided 27-year-old St Ledger will not need surgery.

Leicester City assistant manager Craig Shakespeare said the visit to Germany went fine. “The difficulty when players have a long-term injury is they want to runbefore they can walk. With Sean, he did that last time and we have to pull the reins a bit.