Boss Duffy gutted as Pepper injury jinx strikes again
JIM DUFFY has thrown his arm around Morton ace Conor Pepper after the Irishman’s latest comeback from injury was derailed.
The striker was left in a heap and forded to leave the pitch after making an innocuous pass during Tuesday night’s development team clash against Clyde.
The injury was later diagnosed as the recurrence of the knee problem that has plagued him since February.
Greenock boss Duffy is gutted for his player but urged him to stay strong as he faces possibly having to go under the knife again.
Duffy said: “The boy is devastated and it’s really him we’re feeling for at this moment in time. From our point of view, it’s disappointing, but it’s much more about the impact on Conor personally.
“He’s worked so hard to get himself to this stage. Tuesday night was as good as he’s looked. He was really dynamic, looked fit and sharp, showed great desire to score his goal, was really enthusiastic and playing with a smile on his face.
“He looked as if he wasn’t far away, and for that to happen again was just absolutely demoralising for him. At this moment in time he’s in bits, which you can understand. He’s so frustrated and there’s a lot of anger there.”
“All these emotions are totally understandable.”
The full extent of the problem is not yet known and the Ton boss says it might take a different approach to get to the bottom of the issue plaguing the 22-year-old. Duffy told the club website: “We just have to get to the root of the problem and that’s it.
“There’s obviously something not right in his knee and we have to try and find out what it is before we can re-evaluate it.
“There’s no indication of how serious it is at this moment in time, but it’s pretty much a recurrence of what’s happened before, and it’s happened probably about three or four times now.
“At this moment in time, we can’t put our finger on it. He’s had an operation, he’s had scans, he’s had injections, he’s had various people, consultants and doctors, looking at it.
“Obviously there’s something that has been missed and at this moment in time we don’t know what it is, so until we can find the actual root or cause of the breakdown we’re in the unknown a wee bit.
“We have to take a different approach and look at it slightly differently.
“So we’ll get the weekend out of the way, re-evaluate it and decide what’s the best direction to go in, and we can hopefully find out the solution.”