For my two cents worth (and not sure on the data if anyone can provide any?) I would have opted for a surgical repair. The UK NHS has been doing along term trial on surgical repair vs non-surgical 'conservative' management. Basically a money saving exercise I would think. Perhaps for me the first question is what is your activity level like. As a footballer I would want this as strong as possible following, hence opting for a surgical approach where they can better approximate the ends of the tear. They do a nice micro repair now and we have a video of that in the video section of this forum.

http://www.physiobob.com/forum/physi...es-repair.html

If you were more of a sedentary individual then a conservative approach may be argued. Overall a non-surgical approach is going be more cautious during the immobilization and rehabilitation phase. Unfortunately that means ruling out any full-on sport for this summer. I should also comment that I had a friend who was given a non-surgical approach, I disagreed and we had a surgeon take off the cast and repair it. 6 weeks later he came out of the case and was rehab'ing really well only to trip down a step in his kitchen and re-rupture (perhaps at a secondary site). So even surgical repairs take time to heal.