England centre Henry Slade has undergone shoulder surgery and will miss the start of the Premier League season.
The Exeter player suffered an injury during the Six Nations Championship but continued to play throughout last season and represented England on the tour to New Zealand.
He is expected to be out of action for three to four months, meaning he will need to regain fitness to play for England in the autumn against New Zealand, Australia, South Africa and Japan.
“We knew we had some issues, as did England, and it got a little bit worse over the summer tour,” Exeter director of rugby Rob Baxter told the club website.
“After re-evaluating the shoulder and seeing how Henry felt about his shoulder, we decided that now was the right time to have surgery.
“It’s a relatively complex operation so it’s difficult to talk about his return to play at this stage. It’s likely to be three to four months so unfortunately he’s going to miss a significant part of the early part of the season with us.”
