Bulldogs CEO offers update on young gun’s strange injury

WESTERN Bulldogs CEO Ameet Bains has offered an update on Sam Darcy’s lung injury.

The 19-year-old was sidelined after reporting a shortness of breath over the past week, with subsequent scans revealing a small hole in his lung.

Bains revealed that the key tall played for multiple weeks with the injury as the Bulldogs will hope to have the injury recover with a rest period.

The CEO is refusing to put a timeline on the former number two draft pick’s recovery, but the Bulldogs hope it won’t be as long as three months, the typical recovery period if surgery is undertaken.

“Yeah, it is [an odd injury],” Bains told SEN’s Whateley.

“He’s probably laboured for two or three weeks with some breathing difficulties within the game and away from the game.

“He’d been training and playing as normal and was then subjected to a battery of tests as normally happens in that scenario.

“A very small hole was detected in his lungs so that will repair and the medical advice at the moment is to allow that tissue to repair normally.

“We just need to sit and wait without any fixed term around when that will occur.

“I’m led to believe that if we did take the route to intervening, to repair, that it probably consigns him to a three month or so layoff.

“We’re hoping that it’s a lot sooner than that and the fact that he was actually playing for two or three weeks [with it] gives us a bit more confidence around that.”

While the Bulldogs aren’t certain on how the injury occurred, Bains said they’ve been told such injuries can occur when a cyst bursts inside the lung, creating a hole.

“I don’t think they have absolute certainty on how it has happened,” Bains said.

“But it can sometimes be the result, as I’m told, of having like a small cyst or something like that which bursts and contributes to that [a hole].

“But I’m not 100 per cent sure whether that was what happened in his case.

“He’s clearly a super talented and young kid really, so we’ll be cautious.”

Darcy has six AFL games to his name since making his debut in round 21 of the 2022 season.

– BY LACHLAN GELEIT/ SEN