Tate McDermott explains the ‘complications’ that have left him in race to be ready for Wallabies opener
Tate McDermott was injured in Auckland after Joe Schmidt, inset, selected him for his 50th cap last September
Tate McDermott has revealed setbacks with his hamstring injury have left him in a race to be ready for the Wallabies’ calendar year opener versus Ireland on July 4.
The scrum-half has been sidelined since getting the hamstring surgically reattached after limping out of his team’s Rugby Championship loss to the All Blacks in Auckland last September. That match was his 50th Test-level cap.
There were hopes McDermott would comfortably be involved in the Reds’ latest Super Rugby Pacific campaign.
However, rather than already being back involved in a season where the Queensland franchise under Les Kiss, who will take over at the Wallabies from Joe Schmidt later this year, is in sixth place with five wins in nine matches, the 27-year-old can’t be 100 per cent certain when he might get a club run before the season is out.
“A long journey…”
Golden point got the better of the Reds last weekend, Beauden Barrett kicking the extra-time penalty to give the Blues their Super Round win in Christchurch. They now have just five matches remaining before the play-offs.
Speaking to reporters at a joint ticket promotion with the Dolphins NRL side, McDermott came clean about a rehabilitation that hasn’t been smooth, leaving him playing catch-up with the Wallabies’ opening match of the year in Sydney, their first in the new Nations Championship, less than 10 weeks away.
“It’s been a bit of a long journey, to be honest,” he said. “I remember speaking to the media earlier on and was really positive about how I was going. I was feeling good, but we had just a couple of little setbacks around the hamstring I got reattached.
“It wasn’t doing what it was supposed to do really, but (I’m) feeling really good now… I’m hoping to get a game in before the regular season finishes, but I still can’t give you an exact date.
“I have integrated back into the team training, and so I’ve just got to start putting the final pieces of the puzzle together really. But I’m positive that I will play a game for sure. I just don’t know exactly when.”
So, what hasn’t gone smoothly with his rehab? “I have been incredibly fortunate never to be injured in my career, and never even had a hamstring strain or anything like that, but I’m well across what it looks like now and I have been in the gym for six months trying to get my hammies going again.
“I had to get it surgically reattached, so pretty much when it came off my pelvis, I had to staple it back on, and then all the complications that come with learning to run again and making sure that the muscles in and around that hamstring don’t do too much or don’t do too little.”
Want more from Planet Rugby? Add us as a preferred source on Google to your favourites list for world-class coverage you can trust.
Rugby Australia debt-free after British and Irish Lions tour ‘exceeded projections’
McDermott isn’t the only Wallaby enduring a long return to fitness at the Reds. Half-back partner Tom Lynagh is also still battling his way back, with a calf problem the latest issue preventing him from playing.
“He has had bad luck this year really and his body has let him down a little bit,” said McDermott. “Tommy’s in a similar boat to me in terms of our return to play – we’re both not too far away.
“I just want to see him back out there playing, and so do supporters of Queensland and Australian rugby. They want to see the player he was last year come back.”