emerged as a doubt<\/a> for the 2026 Six Nations after undergoing surgery on his foot last week. <\/p>\nThe 27-year-old first sustained the problem on the British and Irish Lions tour of Australia and missed all three Tests of the victorious series.<\/p>\n
The Australia-born back-three player reaggravated the issue on his only provincial appearance of the season against the Bulls in October and subsequently missed Ireland’s autumn Tests against New Zealand and Japan.<\/p>\n
He was named at full-back for the first time in his international career against Australia and marked his return with a memorable first-half hat-trick.<\/p>\n
A week later against South Africa, however, he was replaced after 64 minutes and is now set for an extended spell on the sidelines.<\/p>\n
“Yes, surgery went well. It was obviously an unusual and invasive surgery for him,” said Tucker.<\/p>\n
“He’s in the very early parts of recovery now. In terms of timeline I’m not exactly sure but you’re talking months for sure.<\/p>\n
“It is very early stages after it but he’s out and he’s at home recovering at the moment.”<\/p>\n
Ireland start their 2026 Six Nations away to France on 5 February. <\/p>\n
Having broken into the Ireland team during the 2022 Six Nations, Hansen played every minute of the 2023 Grand Slam campaign on the right wing, scoring three tries. <\/p>\n
However, he missed the 2024 tournament because of a shoulder injury and endured an interrupted championship earlier this year, missing the Scotland and France games with hamstring and quad issues. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"It will be “months for sure” before Ireland wing Mack Hansen returns from injury, according to Connacht scrum…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":339336,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[567],"tags":[64,63,760,85],"class_list":{"0":"post-339335","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-rugby","8":"tag-au","9":"tag-australia","10":"tag-rugby","11":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/339335","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=339335"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/339335\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/339336"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=339335"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=339335"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=339335"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}