INJURED Adelaide midfielder Brad Crouch has contradicted the medical prognosis of Crows coach Don Pyke, admitting he is suffering from osteitis pubis.
Crouch was asked by South Australian radio station FiveAA on Tuesday to confirm he was sidelined with the injury.
"It is, it's oestitis pubis," Crouch said.
The star midfielder did not play in Adelaide's round one loss to Essendon, and will be out for an extended period.
When asked on March 20 whether Crouch had osteitis pubis, Pyke denied it twice.
"It's not that. I don't know the exact medical details, but it's not that. It's more, as I understand it, it's just general groin soreness," Pyke said last Tuesday.
Crouch said he was suffering lingering pain in his left groin from 2017.
"I'm still pretty sore in my groin. I had it since last year, a lot through the season, I had a groin complaint on my left side," Crouch said.
"Came back after the pre-season, started to feel really good and got to the point where I was about to play an internal game about three or four weeks ago, then had an ab strain for a bit.
"When I came back from that after a week or so, I had some pretty painful stuff around my abs and down lower into my groin.
"They've given me a block off at the moment where I'm resting it and hoping it's going to come good and then get back into training and running," Crouch said.
The onballer played 20 games last year, with a hamstring injury and a fractured cheekbone forcing him to miss matches.
Crouch, 24, needs the pain to go away before he can build up his training program.
"At the moment the plan is to strengthen it as much as I can. That's the number one thing you've got to do," Crouch said.
"We've got great medical staff at the footy club that have got all sorts of exercises that I'm doing all day at the footy club to strengthen it as much as I can.
"When the pain does sort of subside, then you get into your running and stuff like that. It's a pretty frustrating thing to have."
Crows head of football Brett Burton said last week Crouch could be out for two months.
"Brad Crouch has been returning from his abdominal strain and in the process of that, he's flared up groin issues so he will be unavailable to play this week," Burton said.
"Brad is obviously an important player to us and we take a no-risk policy with him given his previous history.
"He's missed a quite a bit of training so we need to go through a re-conditioning phase with him now, and that will be a six-to-eight week process."
