Richmond remains hopeful that promising, young key-position player, David Astbury, may resume playing before the end of the season.
Astbury, who dislocated his left kneecap in the opening minutes of last Sunday’s clash with the Sydney Swans at the SCG, underwent surgery yesterday and the Club is uncertain, at this stage, when he will be ready to play again.
“He’s had surgery just to clean up some of the soft-tissue damage that’s associated with that type of trauma, and we’ll wait to get the report from the surgeon to determine a time-frame for Dave,” said Richmond’s Elite Performance Manager Matthew Hornsby.
“Obviously, he won’t be back in the short term, but, hopefully, it’s not the remainder of the season.
“The main thing from a recovery perspective is you lose a bit of strength around the muscles surrounding the knee joint, so the big challenge initially will be just to try and get that strength back and protect the knee joint in the future.”
With the Tigers’ flight plans post-match thrown into chaos due to the airline problems associated with the huge ash cloud from the Chilean volcano, Astbury travelled back to Melbourne by car with one of the Club’s doctors on Sunday night.
“That allowed him to assess the injury, manage the injury, get the scans done first thing the next day, and obviously organise the surgery as well,” Hornsby said.
In another injury blow for Richmond, mature-age WA ruck recruit , Tom Derickx, suffered an ankle fracture playing for Coburg seniors in the VFL last weekend.
“Unfortunately, Tommy landed awkwardly coming down and crunched the ankle, which cracked the inside of the ankle,” Hornsby said.
“So, he’ll be operated on . . . and we’ll know a little bit more about the prognosis once we speak to the surgeon post-surgery.”
