sustained the injury during his side’s Leinster quarter-final win over Meath on 19 April<\/a>, coming off the O’Connor Park pitch midway through the second half.<\/p>\nWhile he was initially ruled out of Sunday’s semi-final against Kildare, it has now been confirmed that his absence will stretch beyond this season with surgery a necessity.<\/p>\n
Loughlin revealed the extent of the injury in an Instagram post.<\/p>\n
“Today I got news that I more than likely won’t play sport again this year, never mind with Westmeath,” he wrote.<\/p>\n
“(I) have a grade 4C hamstring tear and tendon rupture and I\u2019ll need surgery.”<\/p>\n
The Downs clubman added: “Injuries are definitely a part of sport but I suppose why I am posting this is firstly I’m grateful that my setback is in sport and not my personal life, I didn\u2019t relapse and I still have my overall health thank god. I\u2019ve also never been hurt before long term in sport so it was going to happen eventually.<\/p>\n
“I suppose things were going so well and coming into form at the right time but I do believe everything happens for a reason.<\/p>\n
“I know I\u2019ll be able to look back in a few months and take the learnings from the experience. I\u2019ll also be able to do things that I\u2019ve put off the last while.<\/p>\n
“When I started this Instagram and posting about five years (ago), it was about my recovery and coming back from rock bottom and addiction and dealing with adversity and this is a perfect opportunity to practice what I preach.”<\/p>\n
\n
Watch Armagh v Down in the Ulster Football Championship on Sunday from 3.45pm on RT\u00c92 and RT\u00c9 Player. Follow our live blog on RT\u00c9.ie\/sport and RT\u00c9 News app and listen to Sunday Sport on RT\u00c9 Radio 1<\/p>\n
Watch The Saturday Game and The Sunday Game from 9.30pm on RT\u00c92 and RT\u00c9 Player. Follow a live blog on all matches on the RT\u00c9 News app and on rte.ie\/sport<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Westmeath have suffered a blow after forward Luke Loughlin confirmed he will miss the rest of the season…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":424021,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[61,60,112],"class_list":["post-424020","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-sports","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/424020","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=424020"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/424020\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/424021"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=424020"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=424020"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=424020"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}