Max Evans' injury appears not to have been as bad as was initially feared, but the Glasgow Warriors and Scotland centre could still be out of action for most of the rest of this year.
The 25-year-old, who had been on the standby list for the British and Irish Lions and was also set to play for Scotland in the International Sevens tournaments at Twickenham and Murrayfield later this month, suffered the injury during Sunday's defeat by the Ospreys.
He was stretchered from the field and such was the concern that Evans may have had to undergo a full knee construction that Gordon Mackay, the leading sports surgeon, was consulted in a bid to ensure that he would get state of the art treatment.
Scans suggest that the damage to the joint is not as comprehensive as was suspected. "The outcome of yesterday's scan shows that Max's anterior cruciate ligament is intact which is positive news," said Gerry Haggerty, the Warriors team doctor.
"He has a medial ligament injury and some cartilage damage. He will undergo an operation to repair the cartilage and this procedure will also uncover any injury to the ACL that the scan may not have revealed. At this stage, we can estimate that Max could be out for approximately four to six months."
The Warriors will, meanwhile, be represented by a powerful side including six Scotland sevens internationalists - Mike Adamson, Scott Forrest, Jamie Hunter, Graham Hogg, Chris Kinloch and Colin Shaw - at this weekend's Chard Glasgow City Sevens staged at the Cartha Queen's Park club this weekend.
The tournament will feature full-time professional teams from all four home unions, with Ireland represented by Ulster, Wales by Newport Gwent Dragons and England by Sale Sharks and Newcastle Falcons.
Ian McGeechan, the British and Irish Lions head coach, will leave his post as director of rugby at Wasps at the end of the season and take charge of the next step in London Scottish's bid to return to English rugby's elite. Scottish were promoted to the third tier this season and are focused on climbing back to the top flight as quickly as possible.
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