Reading FC suffer injury blow ahead of Championship play-off campaign

Reading FC manager Jaap Stam has admitted winger Garath McCleary could miss the rest of the season with a groin injury.

The 29-year-old has suffered a persistent groin problem throughout the season, but it has deteriorated in recent weeks and kept the Jamaican international sidelined for the Royals' match against Nottingham Forest.

And McCleary lasted just an hour in Rading's last match against Wigan Athletic.

On the injury, Reading manager Jaap Stam told GetReading: "Garath's been having the problem with his groin for basically the biggest part of the season.

"In the first half of the season he did quite well and it was under control, but with the amount of games and intensity of them meant it got worse.

"Sometimes we needed to take him out and give him a couple of days' rest, give him extra painkillers and then he could play again.

"But towards the end of the season and against Wigan it wasn’t good enough [for him to continue playing]. He didn’t train a lot last week and on the Friday he was okay.

"He had a good training session and we hoped he could give us 60 minutes or a bit more. But he had too many problems and you could see in the game that he had problems with his groins.

"It’s not that bad an injury which means he needs to have an operation - maybe eventually but we don’t know.

"We need to have a look at it with the physios and see what we can do towards the play-offs."