Joey Carbery’s season has been ended prematurely after suffering an ACL injury, which effectively means he has played his last game for Bordeaux Bègles.
The 30-year-old has been dogged by injury in his career and this is a cruel way to end his two-year spell with the Champions Cup holders, although The Irish Times understands this is not expected to affect his impending return to Leinster next summer.
“We lost Joey Carbery this week, a torn cruciate ligament in his knee,” confirmed Bordeaux Bègles head coach Yannick Bru after his team’s bonus-point victory against Castres on Saturday.
Carbery had been due to start the game but had felt pain in his knee during Wednesday’s training session before undergoing further examinations, which ultimately delivered the bad news for the former Leinster and Munster outhalf.
Carbery had been in negotiations with Leinster over a return to the province where he played for three seasons before joining Munster in 2018. The Irish Times understands he has signed a deal to rejoin Leinster, but having played 37 times for Ireland, this is a major blow to his ambitions of breaking back into the Irish squad.
The incident in which Carbery sustained the injury was apparently very innocuous but with all that said and done, the recuperation from an ACL injury is generally seven or eight months nowadays, meaning the should be playing again by October or at worst after the November series.
Since arriving in France in the summer of 2024, Carbery has played 36 matches for UBB, including 18 starts. Of these, 28 have been in the Top 14, although it has been difficult for him to shine with Bordeaux as Matthieu Jalibert’s understudy.
Still, he played in six of the club’s games en route to last season’s Champions Cup success, thereby adding to his winners’ medal from 2018 with Leinster.