Gabriel Bannigan has battled an entensive injury list since taking over as Monaghan manager ahead of the 2025 campaign and one of his key players doesn’t know when he’ll be fit to return to action
Ryan McAnespie has been down this road before. Too many times. Itching to get back to action, but not knowing exactly when that will be.
Tomorrow’s game against Cavan will come too soon. McAnepsie isn’t prepared to tempt fate.
When asked about his fitness after tweaking his hamstring against Dublin back in February, McAnespie was coy about putting a time frame on his comeback.
“I suppose there’s the… I can’t even know what number of hamstring injury this is now,” said McAnespie.
“We haven’t really put a date in terms of return. It’s more so how I’m feeling, you only really know when you get back fully trained and what way it is. We’ll have to take it from there.
“At the minute I’m just tipping over with the rehab and see how it goes, but there’s no date.
“I don’t want to put a date on it. This last year I’ve been trying to put dates on it, and even in club football to get back for this date or get back for that date.
“It just doesn’t work out that way, you just have to give it the time it needs. It’s more so how it feels. Hopefully over the next few weeks we’ll see a big improvement with it.”
A mainstay of Monaghan teams for the last decade, the Emyvale clubman has endured a frustrating 24 months of injury woes.
It is something Gabriel Bannigan is familiar with at this stage having rarely been able to name close to a first-choice team since taking over as Monaghan boss from Vinny Corey ahead of the 2025 season.
McAnespie is hopeful of being able to aid the Farney cause at some point in the near future.
“It’s frustrating surely. You get back and then you’re back for a couple of weeks and then it just goes again,” added McAnespie.
“It’s something that I’ve learned to get on with. I suppose you can’t really moan about it either. You don’t really have time to.
“It’s frustrating especially when you get to the stage of the year, the Championship and all that. It’s the time of year you want to be playing football. Hopefully, I’ll make some sort of appearance this year in the Championship.”
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