Child facing hip surgery and possible end of career

New Zealand’s best hockey player Simon Child is having to face the prospect that his career at the top might be over.

The Black Sticks attacker has been sidelined for a year, since damaging a hip playing in the Hockey India League. It proved a worse injury that first thought and he hasn’t played since.

Now he’s having surgery in midMay, once he returns from his honeymoon. He was to have gone under the knife this week but the required surgery turned out to be “gruntier” than expected, hence the rearrangement.

“I’ve been able to start doing a bit of running, but very basic, straight line and at a pretty slow pace,” Aucklander Child, 29, said.

The surgery will involve dislocating his hip, shearing off bone the surgeons believe is protruding into the hip, cleaning the joint and removing some floating cartilage which is thought to be causing pain.

Child has been told there’s a 70 per cent chance he will recover and get back on the hockey field — which leaves 30 per cent of grim news.

“That was pretty hard. It wasn’t an easy thing to hear but these things happen,” Child said.

His 274 caps have him fourth among all New Zealand players.

Child has been an international since 2005. He believes if all goes well, and given a decent amount of recovery time after the surgery, he could have another five years in him.

But first things first, so it’s surgery, recovery, then “we’ll see”.