Hibbert waits on knee injury
27 Jun 2008 - 10:17:50
Everton defender Tony Hibbert could miss the start of the new season if he requires surgery on a knee injury.
The 27-year-old full-back missed the closing weeks of the last campaign with a knee ligament injury and is waiting to hear whether a period of rest has helped resolve the problem.
"I'm hoping for the specialist to say that I won't need an operation and I really want to just kick on from where I am now," he told the Liverpool Daily Post.
"It's not like we've held back, but we need to know the full extent of the injury before I can start training properly.
"When I did it, it felt okay. It didn't seem bad until the result of the scan, which made it ten times worse when I actually saw what I had done.
"I even said to them that it wasn't that bad. I've had tweaks in my knees before and it didn't feel anywhere near as bad as them.
"We didn't realise at first how bad it was and then the specialist said it was bad.
"I ruptured my medial ligaments, so they've basically come completely off the bone at the top where the nerve endings are and that's why I wasn't feeling much pain."