Wests Tigers dummy half Apisai Koroisau’s season is not over, with the club confirming he has suffered a pectoral muscle strain, rather than the expected tear.
The representative hooker suffered the injury on Saturday evening in a horror loss to the St George Illawarra Dragons at Kogarah.
The game marked the seventh loss in nine starts for the Tigers, while the red and white notched up just their second victory of the campaign.
Koroisau’s departure from the field with what was a suspected season-ending injury left fears he was facing a recovery timeline of around three months, however, the Tigers now expect him to only miss four weeks.
“Apisai Koroisau will be out for four weeks with a pectoral muscle strain,” the club wrote in a short update posted to their social media accounts.
“Scans taken on Sunday have revealed a low-grade strain of the muscle tendon junction following Saturday night’s game against the Dragons.”
Koroisau is undoubtedly one of the Tigers’ most important players, with Benji Marshall’s side falling apart at both ends of the park after he left the game on Saturday evening.
The four-week recovery timeline means Koroisau will likely miss games through to the end of Round 22 against the New Zealand Warriors (home – Campbelltown Sports Stadium), Canterbury Bulldogs (away), Canberra Raiders (away) and Parramatta Eels (home – CommBank Stadium).
The Tigers then have a bye in Round 23 before Koroisau will almost certainly be against the St George Illawarra Dragons at CommBank Stadium in Round 24, with the club in desperate need of wins while he is out if they are to make the finals.
The horror losing streak has relegated the Tigers from their early high-flying position to 12th spot on the table, with the very real likelihood that they need to win at least five, or, given their now very poor for and against, potentially six, of their last eight games to break a streak of not making the finals which stretches back more than a decade.
Josese Lanyon is the most likely player to come into the side for Koroisau, while the likes of Tristan Hope, Jock Madden or Latu Fainu could be set for increased roles.
Fainu was named on last week’s bench, while Madden missed the game, and Hope wasn’t selected.
Marshall, in a short and sharp press conference on Saturday evening, all but took the blame for his side’s attitude in a sloppy loss to the Dragons, but could well be tempted to pull the trigger on more changes for his misfiring outfit as they line up against the Warriors – who will likely play without Origin stars Mitch Barnett and Kurt Capewell – on Friday evening.
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