Martin Boyle 'may have had ACL issue for six or seven years' as Hibs winger opens up on World Cup injury hell

Martin Boyle believes he has been playing with an anterior cruciate ligament injury for virtually all of his Hibs career, as the Easter Road winger opened up about the end of his World Cup dream.

The 29-year-old described the past few weeks as a ‘complicated emotional rollercoaster’ as he addressed the media ahead of Australia’s final group match against Denmark on Wednesday, and recalled his surgeon’s bombshell.

“I was willing to give injections a go to get to the World Cup, and we had all the procedures in place so it wasn’t doom and gloom, there was an opportunity to play through it,” Boyle said.

“The surgeon said that the worst-case scenario was a little bit of damage to the anterior cruciate ligament. He dug a hole and opened me up – basically, I have a larger meniscus than normal – so that was keeping everything in place, and keeping my cruciate stable,” he revealed.

Martin Boyle revealed he has been playing with an ACL injury for nearly his whole Hibs career

"Long story short, I’ve actually had this ACL injury for six or seven years. I have been trying to digest that myself. You get put to sleep and you wake up and your whole knee has been reconstructed. That’s why I’m optimistic; I’ve played with an injury that’s so severe.

“It’s not easy to explain, it’s been a complicated emotional rollercoaster these past few weeks, so to speak about it, get my point across, say how complicated it was, makes things a bit better. Hibs are well aware of what’s happened. It’s obviously not ideal; we were in a bad run coming into this. Hopefully they can kick on when the season starts again.”