WHEN Matthew Egan injured his foot and missed the Cats' premiership after playing every home-and-away game in 2007, the player, who was that year named All-Australian centre half-back, doubtless figured his time would come.

He and the club felt that he would be back and, with the club's playing list in such strong health, his hopes of winning a premiership remained alive. A second grand final passed, albeit less enjoyably for the Cats, and now it seems Egan's chances of playing AFL football may also have passed.

Egan snapped the navicular bone in his foot in round 22, 2007, in a marking contest with Brisbane Lion Jonathan Brown and now has bone grating on bone between the navicular and his ankle.

The 25-year-old defender met his specialist in Sydney recently and the meeting did not go well. He was found to have limited movement in his foot and, as a club statement said yesterday, "his ability to return to the field is now doubtful".

Cats football manager Neil Balme said the club would continue to explore medical options but the outlook for Egan's career was bleak. Egan is contracted for 2009 and will stay on the list, but is likely to be placed on the long-term injury list.

"While this is not absolutely the end of the road, there are very serious doubts that Matthew will be able to recover to a level that would allow him to resume his career. Along with Matthew we will continue to explore all of the options available to him," Balme said.

"Does he want to keep the dream alive or does he want to accept that he needs to do something to make sure that the rest of his life is fairly normal? That's probably over-dramatising it a little bit, but I think that's probably where he is over the next couple of weeks."

Sports medicine specialist Peter Brukner said the type of injury was rare as most navicular fractures were stress-related. That this was a trauma injury had complicated it.

"He has had three operations and I would say there is very little chance he will play again," Brukner said.