Brian McGuigan suffered the eye injury at a club game

In June, McGuigan's father spoke of his fears that the gifted centre half-forward might never play again because of his serious eye injury.

However, Frank McGuigan has revealed that surgeons are now more optimistic.

"The surgeon now says that, touch wood, he may be able to go back to football training as early as next spring," he said in a letter to the Tyrone Times.

The more optimistic forecast comes after the Ardboe man suffered a further setback in his rehabilitation.

"Brian began to see shadows and was recalled to hospital," added Mr McGuigan.

"They did a scan of the retina and carried out another operation in which a stronger bubble than before was placed in behind to hold the retina in place.

"Brian is now unable to see out of the eye because he has no lens in it. He will in due course have an artificial lens placed in the eye.

"For more than two weeks, he had to lie in bed, face down this time.

"He was lying on what is really a kind of specially-adapted massage bed, with a hole in which his head is placed, a desperately uncomfortable position, but that's how it had to be."

McGuigan suffered the injury at a reserve club game in May.