Republic of Ireland international Robbie Brady looks set to miss the rest of the World Cup qualifying campaign after his club Preston North End confirmed the 33-year-old be out of action for "a number of months" with a calf injury.
The 72-cap international picked up the injury in a pre-season friendly for Preston and was not in the Ireland squad for the World Cup qualifying draw with Hungary and defeat to Armenia.
The Championship club today confirmed that he has undergone surgery in order to deal with the injury and limit the chances of of it reoccurring.
Brady is likely to miss the rest of Ireland's qualifying campaign, given the shortened nature of the newer group stage. Ireland take on Portugal (away) and Armenia (home) in October and Portugal (home) and Hungary (away) in November.
Preston manager Paul Heckingbottom confirmed Brady's surgery and said he now expects a significant recovery period.
"Robbie's going to be out for a while," Heckingbottom confirmed. "I spoke to Robbie last week about it. The calf injury that he suffered, we knew it was a bad one, but we've been speaking to some surgeons and getting medical advice. The decision was to go and have an operation to help limit the chance of it reoccurring.
"It means that the rehab's going to take longer. He's had the operation and he's on the mend, but it's going to be months rather than weeks.
"We sort of kept that quiet because there was nothing until we knew which way we were going to go.
"Obviously, we were all really upset that it was going to take this length of time but everyone's comfortable with the decision and think that we've done the right thing and Robbie's on the mend now."
