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Pacific’s Meilleur-Giguère nearing recovery after ‘heartbreaking’ injury at Canada U-23 camp

It was a moment that would devastate anyone: One day before Canada’s U-23 team kicked off its Olympic qualifying campaign, Thomas Meilleur-Giguère pulled up injured in training.

In an instant, the Pacific FC defender’s tournament was over. A grade-two MCL tear, as it was later diagnosed, ruled Meilleur-Giguère out for the entirety of the competition, forcing him to fly back to Vancouver without playing a single minute down in Mexico.

“It was really heartbreaking,” Meilleur-Giguère told CanPL.ca this week. “It hurts more mentally than it hurts on my body for sure. But now it’s behind; I watched the tournament, I saw everything, and now I’m back to work with my club, it’s done.”

Certainly, Meilleur-Giguère would have been an important player for Canada at that tournament which saw fellow CPLer David Norman Jr. shine at the back, but nonetheless, he has no choice but to move on and focus on his recovery. Already, it seems, he’s well ahead of schedule for rejoining his Pacific teammates in training.

It’s only been about five weeks since the injury, but it seems that Meilleur-Giguère has made incredible progress. He will have barely missed a beat by the time he returns to full training with the Tridents.


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“Right now I’m doing very good honestly,” he said. “I’ve been training a lot, not full with the team, but I do some stuff with the team. I’ve been running, I’ve been doing everything normal, except I don’t go to contact. Basically all the technical stuff I do it, and nothing more, but I feel really good. Honestly, my physio helped me a lot, so I’m happy with that.

“It’s a bit crazy, but I’ll take it,” he said.

The silver lining in this timeline is that Meilleur-Giguère will be fully prepared for whenever the 2021 CPL season begins – which is excellent news for Pacific, who will need their centre-back. The 23-year-old played nearly every single minute for the club at the Island Games in 2020, and he’s sure to be just as important this year as well.

“I won’t even say it’s a comeback year because I actually never left for injury,” he said. “If you talk to me about five weeks, that’s nothing, you know? It’s not a comeback, I just can’t wait to be with the team helping them for everything, training-wise and stuff.”

Although he may have missed out on the Olympic qualifying experience, there’s plenty for Meilleur-Giguère to look forward to now. Of course, he’s hoping Pacific can continue to push forward, after a solid 2020 campaign that saw them qualify for the group stage; with almost everyone from that squad returning (plus a few new faces), the club is hoping to make a push for the North Star Shield.

Of course, Meilleur-Giguère is looking forward to playing his first game on Vancouver Island, first.

“It will happen soon hopefully,” he said. “There’s an exciting year ahead, we have a great team. Last year we had a good year so now we build on that.”