The Maroons have been dealt a huge blow with Tom Dearden likely to miss out on State of Origin.
The halfback suffered a syndesmosis injury to his ankle while in action for the Cowboys against Parramatta Eels on Friday night, as reported by Code Sports.
Dearden will undergo surgery and could be sidelined for six to eight weeks.
That means he will miss Origin I on May 27, and is in danger of missing the entire series.
The second game takes place on June 17 with the decider on July 8 likely the match Dearden will be hoping to make.
Dearden sustained the gruesome injury under a tackle by Josh Addo-Carr.
The winger landed with his full weight on Dearden’s ankle as he went for the try line, and the look of anguish across his face showed how painful it was.
Despite that, Dearden tried to run off the injury and finished the game, which may have made the injury worse.
“He’s a tough kid, he wanted to stick it out,” Cowboys coach Todd Payten said.
“I was just talking to him about it. He said he should have come off, but he wanted to run it out. A message was coming up to us that he was good to go.
“He wanted to stick it out, but we all got it wrong.”
Dearden won the Wally Lewis Medal as player of the series last year and it would be a huge blow for Queensland if he was to miss any of the Origin series, especially given his likely halves partner Cameron Munster is out of form.
It has been a bad week for the Maroons with another Cowboys star, Jeremiah Nanai, facing a race to be fit after scans confirmed a shoulder injury that will sideline him for a month.
Queensland were also hit with the bad news that chief executive Ben Ikin will step down at the end of Origin.
