Essendon star Joe Daniher’s season is over after recurring groin problem

Tim Watson wants to see his former club take a more cautious approach to Joe Daniher’s recovery following yet another groin issue. However, the club has defended its handling of the young star’s rehab.

Joe Daniher has suffered another injury setback. Picture: Getty

Essendon has strongly defended its handling of Joe Daniher’s troublesome groin issues that will see him sidelined for the bulk of a second successive season.

It comes as club great Tim Watson urged the Bombers to take a more cautious approach to Daniher’s recovery following what seems certain to be groin surgery in the coming weeks.

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The Bombers and their star forward on Thursday pulled the pin on his 2019 season after he encountered groin soreness in recent matches.

It is a crushing double blow for the Bombers following this week’s season-long loss of last year’s best-and-fairest winner Devon Smith, heaping more pressure on coach John Worsfold and his team ahead of Saturday night’s Dreamtime clash with Richmond.

It’s understood Daniher, 25, encountered more pain during a training session at Tullamarine earlier this week, prompting a meeting with the club’s medical staff.

Essendon has confirmed Joe Daniher will miss the remainder of the season through injury. Picture: Getty Images

Essendon director of football Dan Richardson rejected suggestions the club had mismanaged the issue, maintaining: “If we had our time again, we wouldn’t be doing anything different.

“It’s easy in hindsight to look back and say, ‘We could have done something different’. But we were really confident our medical team have been extremely thorough.

“Injuries do reoccur at all levels. Once you get back playing and get a few games under your belt, that’s where the injury has flared up again.”

Daniher has played only 11 games since his 2017 All-Australian, best-and-fairest season.

He played the first seven games last year before being forced to sit out the rest of the year, undertaking an intense rehabilitation program on his groin.

When fully fit, Daniher is the Dons most devastating forward. Picture: AAP

Now, after only four games this season, he will almost certainly have surgery in an effort to resolve the issue for good.

Watson insisted Daniher had time on his side to bounce back from this frustrating period of his career, but he wants the club to give him as much time required to get his body right.

“This is a setback,” Watson said. “You can’t disguise that, because you want your best players out there playing, and you need to find out what is required to get them out there consistently.

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“They need to go away now and be a lot more conservative than they were the first time, and get him right again.”

It has been pointed out to Daniher that — at 25 — he is a year younger than James Hird was when the champion underwent surgery in 1999 to repair a navicular injury that threatened to end his career.

Hird returned the following year to lead the Bombers to the 2000 premiership and he played outstanding football across eight seasons following career-saving surgery.

“They are very different injuries,” Watson said of the Daniher and Hird injuries.

Daniher in action during an Essendon training session. Picture: Getty Images

“But it does get back to the way you do your rehab. There is the mental side and the physical side … and there is no reason to suggest that Joe is not made of the same stuff as Hirdy.

“He is one of the stars of the game and you want to see him reach his full potential, as he hasn’t had a clean run at that yet.”

Daniher vowed to do everything in his power to get himself back to full fitness next season, saying his medical team was exploring all options.

“Clearly, I want to be out there with my teammates, but with the key people involved in this process, we made the decision to go down this path with surgery more than likely,” he said.

“I’ve felt like I have done everything I could to get back to this point, but with this relapse, our options are now exhausted, which is obviously disappointing.

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“We’ll know more next week in terms of the surgery, but my focus will now be on my rehabilitation process and supporting my teammates in any way I can off the field for the remainder of the season.”

Collingwood premiership player and Herald Sun columnist Mick McGuane said he could attest from personal experience the difficulties in coming back from repeated groin issues.

“I had six or seven (groin) operations,” McGuane said. “It was tough … your kicking goes, your power goes, you have got to lead to get off an opponent and that’s hard.”

“We don’t know the full extent of his injury.

“He is still a young man, and he is their marquee player who might be their highest paid player. Let’s hope he gets a clean run at it next year.”