Egan will ‘pull the plug’ if return doesn’t go as he plans
FOR Ger Egan, 2021 must seem like Groundhog Year. Back at the start of 2020 he was immersed in that painstaking rehab journey that faces every cruciate victim, hoping to win his fitness race for Westmeath’s Leinster SFC date with Dublin on May 23.
Thanks to Covid, it was another six months before they faced the juggernaut . . . and Egan still didn’t make it.
The former captain’s Westmeath comeback had come a fortnight earlier, in their final Division 2 league game against Kildare: he played all bar the dying minutes and scored 0-2.
But Egan knew his knee wasn’t right and his surgeon at the Sports Surgery Clinic, Cathal Moran, confirmed it. So, for the first time since his 2010 debut, he was forced to miss a championship match.
The week after Westmeath’s brief campaign ended in defeat to the Dubs, he had further keyhole surgery. The good news? His cruciate was unscathed and he could be back playing later this spring – pandemic permitting. But as he admits: “I have to get it right, end of story. If I don’t, I’m going to have to pull the plug, you know what I mean?”
Egan’s initial trauma began when he tore the ACL in his left knee against Clare in a June 2019 qualifier, bringing a jarring halt to his most prolific season in maroon (he tallied 3-50 in that year’s league as Westmeath claimed the Division 3 title).
Even when he returned for last year’s club campaign with Tyrrellspass, who reached the county final, the joint was still causing grief.
But he agreed to try it out against Kildare. “There was a chance of promotion. I said I’d give everything I could and Jack (Cooney) started me,” he recalls. But a trip back to Santry confirmed that he needed further surgery and while the operation took place after the Dublin game, playing in it was deemed too big a risk.
“It was a scope, a clean-out. There was an awful amount of scar tissue there, so I couldn’t fully straighten my leg or I couldn’t get muscle development,” Egan explains.
“It’s been a nightmare scenario. I tried to play through the club (championship) and got to the county final. I wasn’t able to train at all, just tried to get myself right for matches.”
Missing out on the Dublin clash was tough. “The first championship game to miss in 11 years,” he points out. “Jesus, I would have loved to be out there, even though I suppose you’re playing the best team of all time, what’s the odds of winning?
Intensity
“But I had to make a conscious decision. I was after pushing it so much that, God, was it worth one more game? I probably wouldn’t have been able for the intensity, to be honest.”
On a positive note, his surgeon has now reported “full range of movement . . . that means I can fully straighten my leg. So now it’s just working the leg, which I wasn’t able to do for about 14-15 months in that kind of straight position.”
As we speak, even in the absence of collective county training, Egan is back “doing near to everything”.
He says: “Just not flat-out sprinting. Mainly I’m trying to get volume into it – see how it reacts under load, building muscle size. Just using whatever I can get my hands on.
“The club handed out weights just before the lockdown . . . I’m running now, thank God, which I wasn’t able to do in other lockdowns because I just wasn’t able for it. There’s definitely light at the end of the tunnel.”
As his 30th birthday looms into view this May, he is reluctant to set a comeback date. “The last time I said this I was out by about nine months! Hopefully in the next two months, I’d like to be 100pc. I just want to get it right. I’m just at an age now where, if I don’t, that’s going to be it.”
On to more existential matters. Egan is “100 percent” supportive of the campaign launched by his former Westmeath colleague, John Connellan, seeking moves from the GAA hierarchy to address Dublin’s total eclipse of Leinster and (more specifically) the advantages they have enjoyed in terms of games development funding. But he doesn’t blame Dublin, lauding their use of in-house managers and saying they have utilised their funding “perfectly, from underage up.”
So what’s the solution?
“I don’t think I’d go as far as splitting Dublin in two and all this sort of stuff. I just think what he (Connellan) is trying to say is he wants more competitiveness throughout Leinster and Ireland,” Egan says.
On the funding question, he wonders if other counties would use it as wisely as Dublin have to date.
“It’s difficult in Leinster because there’s no light at the end of the tunnel there,” he laments.
“And if they (Dublin) were in any other province it would probably be the exact same. Like, let’s be real. I don’t know what the answer is. I just think everybody wants competitive games.”