Young Widnes winger Keanan Brand will undergo surgery on Wednesday after suffering a nasty leg break on debut.
The Vikings starlet was stretchered off just six minutes into his first senior appearance, with results showing both his tibia and fibula have snapped.
It adds to Widnes’ lengthy injury list, which also now includes Gil Dudson, Danny Craven and Wellington Albert, who all went off injured during the club’s defeat to Hull KR last week.
“He has an operation tomorrow,” Betts said of Brand.
“It’s pretty bad but not as bad as we initially thought. It’s quite a bad break, he’ll have an operation to get it plated tomorrow. His tibia and fibula have snapped. You feel for the kid, he’s six minutes into his debut and it’s a freak accident.
“It is what it is, it’s the nature of the beast sometimes.
“We’ve done a lot of work to make sure we’re pretty robust. But then whether its Pat with a broken arm, it was well documented what happened before the start of the season with Kato (Ottio), Krisnan Inu with a broken leg, we’ve lost Keanan Brand with a broken leg and Jay Chapelhow with a broken thumb.
“Throw a couple of concussions in the mix there, it’s a strange year again, it’s not about tears or pulls or people not being fit enough, it’s about people breaking things. Every time I feel confident it gets displaced.”
Despite that, Widnes remain in the top eight, although Betts claimed his side should be in a more comfortable position in the league table.
“We’re at the halfway stage now and there’s three games we probably should have won.
“There’s points there that would make us pretty comfortable in the eight. We’ve put anxiety on ourselves and we have to win games now to take it off.”
