MILLWALL’s Jamie Philpot will have the brace removed from his knee next week as he continues his rehabilitation from surgery.
The 18-year-old was injured shortly after scoring with his first touch in professional football against Wolves on the last day of the season.
Club physio Bobby Bacic said the player’s age was a factor in choosing a more difficult procedure at the time that required a longer time frame for recovery.
“He’s a young lad so we’ve been taking things very slowly with him,” Bacic explained.
“It was his first major injury as well and there’s a psychological aspect to it. He’s going well and working very hard.
“We’ve got a moral obligation to young players and we have to think about career longevity. So we went for a slightly more complicated operation with a longer rehabilitation period where we actually repaired the meniscus rather than trimming it.
“Because of that we had to have a more steady, slow rehab.
“He’s still got another week in his brace but he’s been working hard in the gym to get out of that brace. He’s on schedule.
“When he loses the protection of the brace he becomes a little bit more vulnerable, so we have to be careful not to upset the natural healing.
“The easy option would’ve been just to trim it but we went for the more expensive long-term option.
“If he were at the end of his career it might have been a different story but at this stage we felt that was the right thing to do. It meant a longer operation and a longer recovery time because he hopefully has a long future ahead of him.”
Meanwhile, midfielder Shaun Williams is out of his protective boot after the impact fracture he suffered to his foot against Wigan in April.
“He got quite a boring injury in some respects,” Bacic said. “Because you’ve got to be extremely disciplined with it and protect it in every way.
“He had to show some mental dedication because it’s a quite tedious injury, but he’s progressing well and we’ll see how he is over the next week or so.”