He was mentioned as a possible Ireland captain if he could stay injury free but sadly Ulster’s Stephen Ferris is out again, and it may be for a while.
Last night, in the RaboPRO12, Ulster continued their unbeaten, and impressive start to the season with a six-try, 45-20 win over Edinburgh. Ravenhill was rocking and all looked good with the world bar one, very significant, injury.
Just after half-time flanker Stephen Ferris, in his first game back after missing four with a back injury, went down clutching his ankle. The Irish international played on but was soon down again and limped off shortly afterwards.
The reports from Ulster boss Mark Anscombe post-game were not good.
“Ferris’ ankle was swelling badly and it was certainly not looking good,” he said, with Ferris now all but certainly out of next week’s Test against the Springboks. Due to his lack of game time in recent weeks, Declan Kidney had released Ferris back to his province to get some play under his belt but sadly the gamble didn’t pay off.
We await further news on the extent of this injury but judging by the picture of he stricken Ferris above, we fear that the flanker is certainly out for the Autumn internationals. We hope it’s no longer than that but Brian O’Driscoll’s ankle is keeping him out of action until 2013 so we could posibly expect a similar recovery period for Ferris.
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