Carrick Rangers manager Stephen Baxter fears talisman Paul Heatley could potentially miss the rest of this season with an ankle injury – saying “we're just not entirely sure where we are with that one”.

Aged 38, Irish League legend Heatley has shown no signs of slowing down this season, scoring 12 goals in 28 Premiership appearances for the Taylors Avenue outfit – his best return since the 2018/19 campaign.

Heatley shelved plans to retire after leaving the Crues in 2024, sealing a return to former club Carrick, but has hinted he could hang up his boots at the end of this season.

Having won an array of trophies together at Crusaders before reuniting at Carrick, Baxter will be hoping to convince Heatley to stick around for another term as the Co Antrim club look to build on this season’s success.

placeholder image — Carrick Rangers manager Stephen Baxter. (Photo by Andrew McCarroll/Pacemaker Press)

Carrick collected only their third senior trophy by beating Cliftonville in a Senior Shield penalty shoot-out in January and have now all but secured seventh spot – the final European play-off position.

With three matches left to go, including Saturday’s visit of Ballymena United, Carrick are nine points clear of eighth-placed Portadown but have opened up a whopping goal difference gap on their bottom-six rivals – Carrick’s is +3 while the Ports’ sits at -21.

Baxter will hope to have Heatley available for crunch clashes as Carrick look to seal a European return for the first time since 1976/77, when they played Southampton in the Cup Winners' Cup, but it remains to be seen if he’ll win his race against time.

There’s also doubts surrounding Joe Crowe’s fitness after he was forced off after just nine minutes in Tuesday’s draw at Portadown.

"Paul Heatley got quite a whack on his ankle a week or so ago, and unfortunately that's had to be x-rayed and he’s now going for a further scan,” Baxter told the club’s media channel. “So we're just not entirely sure where we are with that one, we'll know the results maybe by Friday.

"If we see him again the rest of the season, I'm not sure, but hopefully we will.

"Joe has had a problem with his ankle for the last three weeks and he's been limping through games...we've been trying to get him through games.

"Unfortunately he's gone over on that ankle again (against Portadown), and when an ankle's weak on a pitch like that...he's turned his ankle again very quickly.

"When that blows up, again that's a two or three week job, so whether we see him again remains to be seen.

"We’ve one or two wee issues with injuries, but thankfully we've got maybe Adam Lecky returning to us at the weekend and maybe we’ll see one or two others back to us.

"We just have to cope with what's in front of us, we’ll have to roll with the punches and see where it takes us.

"If we can secure that play-off place this will be a phenomenal season for Carrick Rangers given this is only the first year of this rebuild of this team.”