AS good and tough as Bathurst Panthers’ 18-10 win over Orange CYMS was on Sunday, there was a pervading sense of disappointment in many ways after Panthers hooker Luke Carpenter picked up a serious injury.

The Group 10 dummy-half had been tearing CYMS to shreds just as he had done to Mudgee in his previous game before a freak knee dislocation ended his day and probably his season.

Play was brought to a halt for the best part of 20 minutes as he was treated by his team’s trainers and carried from the field on a stretcher, before an ambulance took him to Bathurst hospital.

He will now await an appointment with a physiotherapist tomorrow to determine his fate, and he has his fingers crossed that there won’t be any further bad news.

“I went up to the hospital afterwards and they confirmed there were no breaks in there or anything like that,” he said.

“But I’ll go to the physio this week and find out the full extent of it. I’m just hoping there is no ligament damage or that I haven’t done an anterior cruciate ligament. That’s pretty much the worst case scenario.

“If it’s just a clean dislocation, that’s about the best I can hope for. But it looks like I’m done for this season, whatever happens.”

It has been a diabolical last year and a bit for the talented rake.

He missed almost all the 2013 season after being assaulted at a local pub, leaving him with a badly broken jaw.

He made his return at the start of the current season and was impressive enough in the opening rounds to get selected for Group 10 where he was again performing well before breaking his wrist.

That kept him out for five weeks.

His comeback was emphatic, as he simply destroyed Mudgee through the middle of the field to help Panthers inflict the Dragons’ first loss of the season in a man of the match display.

He was on his way to doing the same when he was caught in an awkward tackle against CYMS.

One of the CYMS’ support staff commented at the time that it was a tragedy for Carpenter, but it was the best thing that could have happened for his side given how much ground he had been pinching out of dummy-half.

“I just sort of got caught with one tackler around the legs and another came over the top to finish it off and bent me back, my leg got caught underneath me,” Carpenter explained.

“It’s disappointing mostly because I feel like I have been playing well and in good form, but just can’t string any games together. It is just a heap of one-off things that keep stopping me.

“One positive was that the boys were able to hang on for the win, it gives us an outside chance of making the finals now.”