Gloucester Rugby struck with another ‘devastating’ injury blow as star forward goes under the knife

Gloucester's star loosehead prop Val Rapava-Ruskin will have surgery on a knee injury that has been causing him problems throughout the season, the club confirmed today. The front-rower has been getting unexplained swelling on his knee and last week a specialist confirmed he requires surgery to solve the issue. In his midweek press conference ahead of facing Leicester Tigers on Saturday, Cherry and Whites director of rugby George Skivington explained in depth the situation with Rapava-Ruskin's injury.

He said: "It is not good news. Val is going to be out for a number of months. I don't think we will see Val until post the mid-season break.

Unfortunately, we have no idea how he has done what he has, but he had an irritation in there that we thought we could manage through but when we have had an investigation in there it was worse than we thought so have aired on the side of caution and made sure he gets the surgery needed but it is a devastating blow for us, no doubt.

Discussing the frustrating saga, Skivington said: "We couldn't quite get to the bottom of it, we tried to get him into a couple of games but had to pull him out right before the game, or the day before the game, and we could have gone on forever like that so we got it investigated. "Sometimes that is dangerous because you can find stuff you don't want to find but we would rather have a fit and healthy Val at the back end of the season. He continued: "Even Val has no idea what happened to it, there was no single incident.

It just started blowing up and initially he was in no pain and we had it drained a couple of times but it kept coming swelling up huge. "It is gutting when someone gets released from a World Cup camp, you want your players to to the World Cup, but the silver lining [when they are cut] is you have got them to play for you and I know Val wants to his hand up and show everyone what he can do but it hasn't worked out like that." Rapava-Ruskin has been on the cusp of pushing for England honours over the last few seasons and came into the summer off the back of potentially his best season yet, being named in BT Sports' Gallagher Premiership Dream Team following a year of impressive displays at loosehead.

While Gloucester don't have a huge number of injured players, their sidelined men are all key figures, with fly-half Adam Hastings out for about another five weeks with a knee issue, talismanic number eight Zach Mercer recovering from surgery on his ankle and backrower Ruan Ackermann a feew weeks away from recovering from a neck and shoulder issue he picked up playing against the Barbarians back in September.

The Cherry and Whites also lost Fijian star Albert Tuisue to a calf injury in Sunday's heart-breaking last-minute 25-24 defeat to Exeter Chiefs.

Skivington confirmed he is having further scans on the injury and but said he is not expecting positive news.