Adelaide General Manager of Football Administration Phil Harper says LARS surgery wasn’t an option for injured forward Taylor Walker.

Walker will be booked in for a traditional knee reconstruction after rupturing his anterior cruciate ligament (ACL) in the first quarter of Adelaide’s loss to Carlton at the MCG on Saturday. The influential forward also sustained damage to the lateral aspect of his knee joint.

Harper said the nature and severity of Walker’s injury meant the revolutionary LARS procedure wasn’t an option for the 23-year-old.

“I did ask the question, but according to the doctor LARS is unacceptable in this case. It has to be the traditional surgery,” Harper said on Monday.

“There is quite a bit of damage to the lateral side of his knee as well – it’s not just the ACL – and that has to be fixed up with a graft as well.”

Walker suffered the injury after landing awkwardly in a marking contest. The star Crow was helped from the field by Club medical staff and substituted out of the game a short time later.

Harper said the Club was initially optimistic Walker had injured his posterior cruciate ligament (PCL), which is still a severe knee injury but involves a much shorter recovery time than an ACL repair.

“The initial thought was that it was a posterior cruciate ligament (PCL) injury. The scans showed the PCL is fine, but the ACL is a big bedraggled and the lateral part is damaged too,” he said.

“I didn’t fear the worst initially, but as the weekend wore on I became more fearful (it was an ACL).”

Walker will spend about 12 months on the sidelines rehabilitating the injury.

On Monday afternoon, Walker tweeted, ‘Yeah, it wasn’t the news I wanted to hear but the boys have a game to win this weekend for The Big Truck (Ben Rutten)!! Thanks for the thoughts’.

Harper said the popular Adelaide cult figure was handling the setback relatively well.

“Because his knee was getting a lot sorer as the weekend wore on, Taylor thought something major was wrong,” he said.

“He’s disappointed, but he’s not the only person going through this at the moment. There are quite a few players with knee injuries at the moment and there are a lot of people in this world worse off than him.

“He’s alright now. It might sink in later. I wouldn’t call him upbeat, but he’s resigned to the fact that (the ACL injury) is what it is. He’s thinking, ‘these are the cards I’ve been dealt, and this is what I have to do. He just wants to get the surgery done, and get back on the road to recovery and playing again.

“He’s a great mate, not only of players at the Club but staff of the Club and our supporters. Everyone will be feeling sorry for Taylor, but what Taylor would want is for the team to perform, which it hasn’t been doing so far.

“He’d get a smile back on his face if we can start performing to our capabilities.”