Jack Crowley has his sights set on a New Year period return for Munster Rugby.
The 26-year-old suffered a vascular lower limb injury, which has kept him side-lined since April of this year.
Crowley missed the end of Munster’s last URC campaign, which saw the province fall at the quarter-final stages to The Bulls after a sixth-place finish in the table.
It was then a quiet summer for the Cork native, who also missed Ireland’s Nations Championship tests in July.
Munster are without their star flyhalf for the start of this season, injuries to Tom Wood and new signing Will Harrison has seen somewhat of an injury crisis in the number ten jersey for the Reds.
Crowley is set to miss the first half of the URC season and crucial Champions Cup pool games before recovering from his “unique” injury.
“Unique and obscure”
In an interview with OffTheBall, the two-time Six Nations winner opened up on his recovery from the lengthy injury.
Crowley said, “What’s out there is what we know. The fact it is unknown and the fact it is unique and obscure to have symptoms in the leg like that.”
“The only known is that it is healing really well, it’s coming along nicely. The timeline is kind of that New Year period. Hopefully quicker, I’d love that.”
“But it’s the case with all the return to play protocols, you just don’t know the complications. So that’s the plan. We will take it day by day, literally. It’s an unknown.”
Crowley picked up the unusual injury back in April in the warm up preparing to face Ulster. The Munsterman missed the last three URC league phase games and also the knockout stage of the competition.
Crowley added: “It appeared as something that felt like a nerve symptoms. And then unfortunately got to the warm up and it just wasn’t functioning.”
“It was the same symptoms that you’d have in your nerve in the calf. And we then did further tests and it proved to be vascular, which obviously no one suspected as it’s quite rare.”
“It’s good to be unique. It’s very lowkey. I’m just taking it easy at the moment, which is the perks of it as well. Just chilling out and resting.”
“It’s something that’s there and as we go down the timeline, it will push that back in terms of more I can do with time. Time is our friend here.”