Preston North End striker Sean Maguire is set to miss both of Ireland's games at the start of next month after scans on a hamstring injury sustained in his club's final preseason game at the weekend showed a more serious problem than had been expected.
The 24-year-old was taken off less than half an hour into the 3-0 win against Oldham but it wasn’t until the scan results came back that it became clear how serious the injury was. Maguire missed four months of last season with a similar issue and will now be sidelined for up to two months of the Championship campaign that gets under way this weekend.
"Sean was taken off as a precaution, we didn't think much of it," said Preston boss Alex Neil. "Because of his history, we got him scanned and it's come back a lot worse than what we thought. He will be missing for the best part of a couple of months."
That means that the striker is all but certain to miss Ireland’s opening Nations League game, away to Wales, and the friendly in Poland a few days later and the former Cork City player may yet struggle to make it back for the games in October against Wales and Denmark if his recovery doesn’t go to schedule.
The Oldham game went well for a couple of the other Irish players at Preston with Daryl Horgan getting one of the goals and Graham Burke laying one on. The club faces QPR at home in its first game of the new league season this Saturday.
