Johnny Sexton could miss Ireland's autumn international Test series after breaking his jaw while playing for club side Racing Metro.
The British and Irish Lions fly-half could be sidelined for two months as a result of the injury, which was caused by a collision with Craig Burden in a Top 14 victory over Toulon on Saturday.
The 29-year-old faces a race to recover in time to be in contention for a place in the three-Test autumn series, which starts with the visit of South Africa to Dublin on November 8. The Irish then host Georgia and Australia.
Racing overcame the French and European champions Toulon 17-10 in Paris at the weekend, but Sexton was withdrawn after an early clattering from Burden. The South African hooker was sin-binned as a consequence of the challenge.
Sexton's injury will be a sore point too for Irish rugby. The fly-half is expected to complete a move back to Leinster next summer in an effort to boost his country's World Cup build up. The 45-times capped playmaker is arguably Ireland's most important backline player following Brian O'Driscoll's retirement and so will be afforded every opportunity to regain his fitness in time to play in the autumn.
Sexton had been a serious doubt for the autumn series last year after succumbing to the heavy workload expected of him after first joining Racing, with the Irishman suffering a leg injury. Should he miss out this year then Ulster's Paddy Jackson is expected to replace him in the fly-half role, although Leinster's Ian Madigan and Munster pair Ian Keatley and JJ Hanrahan would also be worthy of consideration.
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereComments are closed on this article