Injury woes cast doubt on reillys future

Kevin Reilly’s inter-county career is hanging in the balance after Mick O’Dowd revealed that the stalwart full-back will definitely miss Meath’s Leinster SFC quarter-final clash with Wicklow in Navan on Sunday and is a doubt for the weeks ahead.
Reilly has endured hip problems for the last couple of years and underwent surgery last October, but since returning the Navan O’Mahonys man has struggled to regain the range of motion required to compete at the top level and while his general fitness is without question Reilly’s match fitness has raised issues.
“Kevin had major hip surgery last October and has worked incredibly hard since then and he came back to play against Roscommon and Down in the league, but the hip stiffened up a lot with games coming one after the other in six days,” O’Dowd told the Meath Chronicle.
“He didn’t play against Cavan, but returned to play the first round of the club championship, but the hip stiffened up again and he knew that it wasn’t sustainable to play a game and then spend a week to 10 days not being able to do anything.
“He went back to the physio team in Santry and has been working with our physio team here on a new prehab programme with the view of trying to get back playing.
“Kevin is really operating short term, he’s going from one week to the next and seeing how he is feeling. He loves playing for Meath and he loves playing for his club so he is trying desperately hard to get back.
“He is doing an incredible amount of training and is in great shape. You can do a lot of training, but it is the twisting and turning of a game that he is trying to build up his body to be ready for again.
“Kevin has given some amount of service to Meath and he is such an incredible man inside the dressing room and on the field, we are hoping for his own sake that he can come back, but in terms of the team we are looking at it as a bonus if we can get him back rather than just checking in before every game to see if he is right.”
There is no doubting that a fit Kevin reilly with be a major addition to the Meath panel and it is also beyond reproach that he is doing everything he can to get himself back into contention, hopefully in time for the latter stages of what could be a long summer for Meath football.