For the second consecutive season, injury threatens to ruin Wests Tigers prop Keith Galloway's State of Origin dream.

The red-headed giant underwent hand surgery on Wednesday, definitely ruling him out of a possible NSW debut in game one in Sydney on May 26.

After being ruled out for a minimum of two weeks, he's also left with an uphill battle to regain fitness and prove himself in time for games two and three.

Last year, at virtually the same stage of the season, just when judges had started to talk up Galloway's Blues chances, he was sidelined for a lengthy period with a knee injury.

While he was perhaps more of an outside hope last season, he was certainly favoured to break into Craig Bellamy's side this series and the setback comes as a devastating blow to the City Origin front rower.

Galloway suffered the injury in Wests' round three win over Parramatta at the Sydney Football Stadium and has been battling on ever since.

Tigers coach Tim Sheens said the surgery couldn't be delayed any longer but believes Galloway remains a chance of still debuting in the Origin series.

"That's football, sometimes you're in the right place at the right time, other times you miss out," Sheens said.

"But I think if he comes back strongly there's still plenty of football to be played at that level, let alone for the rest of the season for us.

"He actually injured himself in this round last year against Souths at the cricket ground and that put a big hole in the middle of his season.

"We miss his go forward, there's no doubt, and his size but he's been struggling for over a month now with this hand and it's affected everything, particularly his defence.

"He's disappointed in that so we've had to bite the bullet and the surgeon said the ligaments need to be anchored back in his fingers and we've just had to put up with that at the moment."

Galloway joins Jason Cayless, Taniela Tuiaki, Tame Tupou and Tim Moltzen on the Tigers' injury list.

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