Luke Keary’s return from a pectoral injury in the NSW Cup on Saturday is set to bring South Sydney coach Michael Maguire some welcome selection headaches.
Keary hasn’t played since suffering the injury in the pre-season Auckland Nines tournament, robbing Maguire of ringing in a new halves combination for the 2014 season.
Maguire had signalled his intention to play five-eighth Keary alongside Adam Reynolds in the Rabbitohs’ halves this year with John Sutton set to move to the back-row.
After Keary’s injury Maguire moved Dylan Walker to pivot, but when that experiment faltered he switched to his default halves setting of Reynolds and Sutton that has served the Rabbitohs so well over the last two seasons.
But with Keary now fit again and set to make his 2014 debut for Souths feeder club North Sydney, after serving as a substitute reserve in the Rabbitohs’ 32-10 win over Wests Tigers on Friday night, Maguire will have some decisions to make in the coming weeks after their round 15 bye.
“Luke will start tomorrow in reserve grade and just start building on the things he has been practising, he will be a great addition to us,” Maguire said.
“Those things are definitely an option, I will obviously talk to John, and we talk a lot about the game, the smart player he is, about how Luke comes in and how we blend him into the squad and the team.
“It’s great for us, we just have to keep building. There are plenty of options for us to look at as we keep moving forward.”
Prop George Burgess is a concern after going down with an ankle injury in the second half against the Tigers.
“He twinged his ankle, the syndesmosis, we will have to find out the severity of that,” Maguire said.
“You don’t really know until the scans, but the doctor said because he can get weight bearing on it, it’s not too bad. So hopefully there is some positive news there.”
With all four Burgess brothers, George, Sam, Luke and Tom playing first grade for just the second time, Maguire singled out Sam for special mention after overcoming a pre-game back spasm to play a key role in the win.
“He came in off the warm-up and the doctor and physio said he wasn’t going to be out there but he just said ‘I will be right’,” Maguire said.
“Right down until a minute before kick off he was trying to get himself right, so for him to do what he did was pretty inspirational.”
