ETHAN Rafferty’s 2021 season was scuppered in an innocuous incident during Armagh’s first pre-season friendly. After rupturing a cruciate ligament, the Grange clubman won’t kick a ball this year.
Full-forward Rafferty had an operation on the injury last Tuesday which was successful but he faces nine months on the sidelines including many hours of rehab and fitness work before he can return to playing football.
“There wasn’t much to it,” he explained.
“I went to turn and my knee buckled underneath me.”
Initially he wanted to “try to run it off” but Armagh physio Shea McAleer stepped in and made the call for Rafferty to get off the pitch. The county acted quickly; the Grange clubman was scanned two days’ later, he knew the full extent of his injury within a week and within a month he’d had the surgery. Now he has to concentrate on recovering and, unfortunately for him, he’s no stranger to that. His latest setback has come after problems with the shoulder and his hip over the past three years.
“They say things come in threes so hopefully this is the end of it,” he said.
“We’ve seen a few boys pull hamstrings this year but my injury was just an accident – you can twist your knee or twist your ankle at any time. We hadn’t done any collective training but I had done a good bit and I was coming in (for pre-season training) relatively fit compared to previous seasons and I was feeling good.
“So I can’t put it down to anything really, except bad luck – if I didn’t have bad luck, I’d have no luck at all.”
The recovery period for a cruciate operation is nine months and Rafferty hopes to be back on the pitch by March meaning he should be available for a portion of Armagh’s National League campaign next year. Of course that means he is ruled out of football – both club and county – in 2021.
