NEWTOWN & Chilwell is almost resigned to being without utility Ryan Gamble for most of this GFL season.
The Eagles kick off their season against reigning premier South Barwon on Saturday, but are expecting to be playing without the help of Gamble for some time because of a hip injury.
Newtown coach Jacob Spolding yesterday said it was likely the 25-year-old would require surgery at some stage.
"We're trying to prolong it if we can but it looks like he'll have to have surgery," Spolding said.
"In terms of playing, he hasn't played or trained for a couple of weeks now because we're trying to manage it, so we're going to see how that goes. But if that's no good in the coming weeks we'll have to go down the surgery path unfortunately.
"I don't know how invasive the surgery will be but you'd expect it'd be a fair portion of the year (he'd miss) if it came down to that.
"It's one of those things that happen in footy, injuries come along and you deal with them as best you can."
Gamble, who played two games with Palmerston in the Northern Territory Football League in December after playing 16 games for Newtown last season, will continue to seek alternative treatments to improve the hip before a decision is made on surgery.
"He's currently going through the process of a strengthening program, so that's going to be about four to six weeks and he's at week four of that," Spolding said.
"He's still in consultation with those medical people to let them know how that's going but, as I said, he hasn't trained yet, so in the next couple of weeks we'll know whether he needs to have the surgery.
"It looks more likely that he will than he won't, so we'll just cross that bridge when and if we get to it."
Newtown was bundled out of last year's finals series in straight sets, but Spolding said the team was in good shape to challenge again this season.
"We've only got Ryan Gamble as our main injury concern at this point in time," he said. "We've got a couple of others with slight niggles, so hopefully they come up, we'll see where they're at tomorrow night.
"But the boys have had a really good summer, our practice match form has been solid and we've played well in those, so I can't see why we won't be able to compete and compete well in 2013."
Last Modified on 19/04/2013 17:08