Fergus McFadden says he won't be back in action for Leinster or Ireland until after Christmas.
The wing suffered a torn quad against Cardiff Blues two weeks ago and confirmed the extent of the injury as he joined Off The Ball's premier rugby correspondent and his ex-team-mate Brian O'Driscoll on Friday night's show.
"I tore my quad quite badly against Cardiff in the last game I played so I'm going to be out for quite a while now so it's pretty disappointing," McFadden said. Stating that it's quite an "unusual" injury, he added that his return date will likely be after Christmas.
He also said that the most frustrating thing about the injury was the fact that he had otherwise been at peak fitness, and it had come just before a key period of the season.
"Part of me was thinking that it couldn't have been at a worse time in a way [because it came] just before Munster, just before the first European games, just before the shop window opens for Joe Schmidt to look at players for November," he said.
McFadden also revealed that he took on Muay Thai boxing during the summer.
"I was a lot stricter with myself in the off-season this year, just doing a bit of training and I did a week's camp of Muay Thai kick-boxing in Thailand. That was a cool experience over there," he said, although he hastily added jokingly that he is "no Conor McGregor".
However, his newfound skills may have been useful to him a while back during some training ground scraps, as he and Brian O'Driscoll chatted about incidents they had seen or been involved in - including against each other - as BOD admitted that they had a few "tussles once or twice".
"The situation we had, the game was getting feisty and guys are getting particularly tired. It's generally when things happen in training," said McFadden.
"I think I blocked Brian, and we went on a bit of a run, scoring afterwards. Then he just kind of said 'if you do that again, I'm going to hit you a dig'. Of course I didn't learn my lesson, and I did it again. We just squared up to each other and he threw one, and I threw a couple of handbags back, and then we got pulled away. I had a small gash around my eye. But that's just training ground stuff."
Brian explained that he got yellow carded and was made to do a lap as punishment.
"Then I started feeling bad and I saw a little bit of blood and I thought 'oh God, that's unnecessary,'" he said.
O'Driscoll also explained that he had frantically tried to get in touch with McFadden in the wake of the scrap to talk about it, and there were no hard feelings in any case.
Of course, in a long and decorated career, that wasn't the only story in his locked, as BOD also touched on another minor scrap with Shane Horgan.
"I had a bit of a fracas with Shane Horgan in Joe's [Schmidt] first year as well, and it was the exact same situation. Exhausted, he blocked me a couple of times, and we went at it. Then we went out to our respective wings and as the game went on, I glanced over to him. He looked at me and we broke out laughing,"
BOD added that Horgan told him afterwards that it was a "great message [...] if two friends are willing to go at it in front of the young lads, what are they going to do to the opposition" in terms of passion and fighting spirit.
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