Paul Cooke slams the rehab on Hull FC’s Scott Taylor

Scott Taylor is set to face another spell on the sidelines.

But, that news has rankled one former Hull FC great Paul Cooke who, speaking from his own injury experience, believes the club made a mistake in not getting this sorted last year.

After suffering a serious foot injury last year, Taylor was not sent for an operation and instead went through a rehab period.

That, however, has not worked with the prop forward instead suffering a stress fracture on the same foot.

Speaking to BBC Radio Humberside via the Hull Daily Mail, Cooke stated that he believes a mistake was made in not operating on the injury and cited the financial situation created by the Covid pandemic as a possible reason.

“The club is trying to be the best they can be by every member of the squad and get by the best they can with Covid,” Cooke said.

“I just wonder whether it should have been operated on in April last year to try and avoid another injury like this. It will have been a decision between Scott, the club and everyone will have been involved in that so I’m not blaming anyone. But if that was football, they would have been operated on tomorrow, yesterday or last April, I just wonder if that would have solved it.”

He continued: “I go back to a story when I was 18, I went to see a specialist who said I broke my scaphoid in my wrist. He said if you can manage the pain you can play with it and have a pot on it for 12 weeks at the end of the season. I did that, played the first game of the following season, re-broke it, played another season with it broke, had it operated on and it never broke again, so why wasn’t the operation done the year before?

“They (clubs) are trying to save some money and it is costing players because they’re not having what they really should have. Can you imagine Wayne Rooney going to the World Cup and not having an op on his metatarsal, then he breaks down in the first game and they say they should have maybe had the operation done to make sure?