Wales flanker Ellis Jenkins sidelined following problems with knee surgery

Cardiff director of rugby Dai Young has revealed that flanker Ellis Jenkins has not trained all summer after a knee operation at the end of last season has proven to be a “little problematic.”

The 15-cap Wales international missed Cardiff’s preseason encounter with Gloucester on Friday night, which the Cherry & Whites won 42-17 at Kingsholm, and WalesOnline have reported the cause for his absence.

The positive news for Jenkins and everyone involved with Cardiff and Wales is that this is not the knee that curtailed so much of his career, and saw him sidelined for 26 months after tearing his ACL against South Africa in November 2018.

“Ellis hasn’t trained all summer,” Young told WalesOnline. “He picked up a bit of a niggle in his knee. Not the one that he seriously injured, the other one.

“He had a clear out towards the end of last season, nothing serious, and it’s been a little bit problematic, to be honest. Nobody is panicking about it but hopefully he’s in training next week. That’s the reason he didn’t play against Gloucester.”

Despite the scoreline, Young took positives from his side’s loss in what was their first preseason outing of the year.

“We can take a lot of good things from tonight – it was a real worthwhile exercise,” Young said to the Cardiff Rugby website. “It was always going to be a big challenge coming here because this was Gloucester’s third pre-season game, their season starts next week and that was not far off their best team.

“Lots of our boys weren’t available for tonight’s game, but that’s a great challenge for the for the youngsters coming through. We had a very young backline first half, but I thought they did really well.

“Nobody wants to lose and nobody wants to rack up big scores but I think we’ll take a lot out there tonight and the youngsters will take a lot.”