Leinster head coach Jacques Nienaber fears Caelan Doris has suffered a “serious” shoulder injury, which looks to have thrown his chances of making the British & Irish Lions squad into serious doubt.
Doris, 27, is a leading candidate alongside England‘s Maro Itoje to captain the Lions on their tour of Australia. But Doris was forced off injured in Leinster’s Champions Cup semifinal defeat to Northampton on Saturday.
Leinster have confirmed Doris’ injury requires surgery, and he is set to undergo the procedure on Tuesday or Wednesday. All this leaves plenty of uncertainty over Doris’ fitness and future availability ahead of Thursday’s Lions squad announcement.
“He saw a specialist and I think there’s some further investigation that needs to be done,” Nienaber told Irish media of Doris. “Fingers crossed that things aren’t as bad as we think it is, but in the last couple of months that I’ve worked with Caelan, he’s not a guy that necessarily comes off the pitch with injury.
“So when I subjectively saw him coming off the pitch on Saturday, I thought in my mind: ‘That must be quite serious.’
“We’ll probably know more in the back end of the week, but my gut, and it’s only gut, says that I think it might be serious, but fingers crossed it might not be. Fingers crossed they go in and there is not too much structural damage. My official knowledge is a little bit woozy, but if there isn’t structural damage, maybe four to six weeks. If there is, it could go up to anything as big as six months.”
If it’s four weeks, then Doris will miss the rest of Leinster’s season but would be fit for the Lions’ first match against Argentina on June 20. But any complications and structural damage would lead to a longer spell on the sidelines which would all but rule him out of the tour.
This would come as a bitter blow both for Doris and the Lions. Doris missed the last Lions tour through concussion and was widely perceived to be a nailed-on starter for this summer’s tour.
But this shoulder injury has placed his chances in jeopardy and sees Itoje emerge as the clear frontrunner to captain the Lions against the Wallabies.
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Source: espn.com