NICKY Hunt's amazing powers of recovery have given Wanderers an unexpected bonus ahead of Monday's derby duel with Manchester City.
Sam Allardyce was worried he might lose the young defender for the rest of the season, when he dislocated his shoulder in last Sunday's defeat at Newcastle.
But the Reebok boss says Hunt could still play at the City of Manchester Stadium.
"They popped his shoulder back in and, if he can put up with the pain and we can get the inflammation down, he could be back," the manager said.
Hunt, who dislocated the same shoulder on three previous occasions, thought surgery last summer had put an end to that particular problem. But he was in trouble again at St James' Park where, in a strong challenge on Newcastle midfielder, Amdy Faye, the ball rebounded on him and knocked the shoulder out of joint again.
Still only 21, Hunt already has a reputation for surviving serious injury scares.
In July 2002, he was taken to hospital with a suspected broken leg during Wanderers' pre-season tour of Malta, but was fit enough a month later to make his Premiership debut at Manchester United.
When he was stretchered off in the FA Cup win at Oldham in January, injured in a challenge on Latics' on-loan midfielder Lee Croft, is was again feared he had suffered a serious leg fracture. Criticising the tackle by the young Manchester City man, Allardyce described his own player's injuries at the time as "horrific". But hospital checks that night showed that he had suffered only serious bruising to his ankle and shin.
He missed only three games.
Wanderers' backroom staff are convinced Hunt is one of a rare breed of "good healers", whose recovery powers frequently confound the experts, while Allardyce drew on painful memories of his own playing days to amusingly suggest that his lanky physique should carry a health warning.
"Normally, when you get players like Nicky's type, they injure other players more than they injure themselves," he said.
"Players like Ian Mellor (the former Manchester City, Sheffield Wednesday and Brighton player and father of Liverpool's Neil Mellor) were so bony that, when you ran into them, you squealed.
"Their bones are so sharp, you have massive bruises the day after colliding with them."
Whether Hunt is fit or not for the City game, Allardyce is likely to revert to the Vincent Candela-Ricardo Gardner left-wing alliance that looked so promising until he was forced to shuffle his pack at Newcastle.
"They were absolutely torturing Newcastle down that side in the first quarter of the game," he said, recalling how effective Gardner had been playing in an attacking role in front of the Frenchman. Unfortunately, we had to change things when Nicky went off.
"The substitution should not have made that big a difference but Khalilou Fadiga didn't give us the same dimension going forward as Nicky did and we lost our way as an attacking force."
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