Source :- THE AGE NEWS
The Bulldogs are “fearing the worst” after star forward Sam Darcy was subbed out with a knee injury after landing awkwardly in the Bulldogs’ Easter Sunday clash against St Kilda.
The Bulldogs’ general manager of football Matthew Egan told Channel Seven the worst prognosis would be a ruptured anterior cruciate ligament, which would almost certainly rule Darcy out for the rest of the 2025 season.
Sam Darcy on the ground in pain.Credit: AFL Photos via Getty Images
Darcy crumpled to the ground and clutched at his left knee, which he appeared to hyperextend after a marking contest in the first quarter.
“The medical staff are pretty concerned. At this stage, they’re fearing the worst. It looks like a possible ACL. We’re just going to have to wait til tomorrow and get scans to confirm,” Egan said.
“Until we get scans it’s pretty hard to say too much.”
Physiotherapist and triple-premiership AFLW defender Libby Birch told this masthead that all the initial signs were that Darcy had ruptured his ACL.
She said the hyperextension of the knee was a “mechanism for an ACL” and the fact that Darcy had grabbed at his shin was a bad sign.
“When players grab at the shin, it’s likely that the ACL has ruptured,” she said.
“The feeling is of the shin falling away from the knee. That’s why players grab their shin, it’s a telltale sign of an ACL.”
Birch also said a 2022 study showed that a family history of ACL injuries left an athlete two and a half times more likely to suffer a rupture. Darcy’s father Luke suffered two during his playing career.
The 21-year-old went straight to the change rooms after he hobbled off the field, visibly in pain and accompanied by medical staff.
Birch explained why the club doctors would have said they feared the worst for the young forward, even without having done scans.
“They would have done the ACL test in the rooms, and the reason they’re suggesting it’s an ACL is because there [would have been] way too much movement in the knee, suggesting the ligament is not intact,” she said.
Former St Kilda captain Nick Riewoldt told Channel Seven viewers he hurt his knee in a similar situation in his playing days, and immediately feared it was an ACL rupture.
“I had one similar type of hyperextension,” he said.
“I have never done an ACL and that’s where my mind went straight away … [I’m] hoping that … is not as bad as it looked for Sam Darcy.”
Darcy emerged from the clubrooms to sit on the sidelines about halfway through the second quarter, without ice or strapping on his knee.
He’s a pillar of the Bulldogs’ forward line and has been particularly crucial due to the prolonged absence of Jamarra Ugle-Hagan.
