He's back - Portsmouth forgotten man in West Brom frame after nightmare seven-and-a-half months
His Pompey playing career consists of just 54 minutes - now John Mousinho is relishing the chance to finally unleash his luckless defender.
It has been seven-and-a-half months since Tom McIntyre arrived at Fratton Park for an undisclosed fee from Reading.
However, the 25-year-old has not featured competitively since breaking his left ankle in a tackle with Northampton’s Mitch Pinnock on his debut in February.
There was a long-awaited comeback in pre-season, with friendly outings against Gosport and the Rocks, only to limp out of action in the behind-closed-doors clash with Wycombe.
That hamstring issue subsequently sidelined McIntyre for another seven weeks, ensuring he has now been absent for 20 games since joining the Blues.
But having returned to training last week, Mousinho is eyeing a potential return against West Brom on Sunday for the injury-plagued centre-half.
Pompey’s head coach told The News: ‘Even though we are short in defence, that doesn’t accelerate the timescale, you have to do what is right for Tom - and now he’s back in contention.
‘It was frustrating when we lost him back in February and frustrating that we lost him after the Wycombe game when he picked up an injury.
‘It has been a stop-start pre-season for him, but we brought him in during January for a reason - and one of the reasons was to help us in League One.
‘The other reason is because we thought we could go up to the Championship and he can continue to help at that level having played there before.
‘Tom’s in contention for West Brom and it’s good to have him back.’
Thankfully, Pompey’s injury list has cleared since the 3-0 defeat at Sunderland almost a fortnight ago.
Jacob Farrell, Josh Murphy and Conor Shaughnessy have also returned to training, while Regan Poole continues his recovery from an ACL injury.
In addition, Reuben Swann is expected to resume his Hawks loan spell next week having been sidelined with a tight hamstring.