‘Is my season wiped out?’ Inside Tigers star’s ‘rare’ hamstring blow to continue luckless runBen Cotton
Fox Sports
May 1st, 2024 Tigers superstar forward Tom Lynch has opened up on his “frustrating” latest hamstring injury setback, conceding he feared his season was over at one stage.
Lynch underwent surgery after suffering a serious hamstring injury against Sydney last month, with scans revealing significant tendon damage behind his left knee.
It continues a grim run of injuries in recent years for the 31-year old including multiple hamstring setbacks.
Lynch hasn’t played than 20 games for the Tigers since his first season at the club in 2019 including playing just four matches in 2023 due to a foot issue.
His latest setback came amid a promising start to the season, kicking six goals from three games before getting struck down in the fourth quarter of Richmond’s Round 3 win over the Swans.
“Obviously highly frustrated,” Lynch said of his recent luckless injury run on Fox Footy’s AFL 360.
“As an AFL footballer, you just want to go out and play. I broke my foot last year and missed the whole season. I was really looking forward to this season.
“The first two games I was pretty rusty, felt a bit better in the Sydney game and felt I was getting back into the swing of things. To go down with that injury … it was quite frustrating and you sit there and think: ‘Here we go again, is my season wiped out?’
“But it’s been a lot more positive than last year and I’m looking forward to having a strong second half of the year.”
Lynch is one of several Richmond guns currently sidelined by injury.
Some of those Tigers, like Lynch, are set for lengthy absences including Josh Gibcus (knee, season), Jack Ross (foot, eight weeks) and Tim Taranto (wrist, six weeks) as well as the likes of Noah Balta (knee, one week), Jacob Hopper (knee, three weeks) and Dion Prestia (hamstring, one week).
Back running over the last week, Lynch was hoping to return to the field sooner than his initial 12-week prognosis.
“Hopefully I’ll get back sooner than anticipated … It’ll be at least another four, five weeks I think now. Hopefully I can get back at that nine or 10-week mark,” he said.
“I’ve only been running a week, so over the next week or two we’ll get a good guide of where I’m at and hopefully I can push up.”
Asked when he knew he’d done a serious hamstring injury, Lynch said: “I’ve had a couple of little hamstrings, but it’s actually a different tendon to the usual hammy tendon which you grab and you sort of fall over as you see.
“Mine is inside the knee — our docs and physios hadn’t seen that injury … It’s quite a rare injury … I honestly didn’t know until the next morning when it got scanned.
“I felt a bit of a crunch, which typically you don’t feel for hamstrings. I came off, they checked me out … and the next morning I woke up and thought I’d badly injured my knee. They said: ‘No it’s a hamstring surgery and you’ll need to get surgery.’”
https://www.foxsports.com.au/afl/teams/richmond-tigers/afl-2024-tom-lynch-speaks-on-afl-360-on-hamstring-injury-feared-his-season-was-over-return-richmond-tigers-injuries-latest-news/news-story/d96ffb45fe09b6674b66bdac30cf7514
