I’VE been daydreaming a lot lately. In my mind’s eye it’s late in the season and St Mirren are on the brink of promotion back to the Premiership. I’m on the bench and there are just five minutes to go. Jack Ross tells me to warm up, then I’m getting stripped and the next thing I’m on the pitch and nodding in the winner. I see myself celebrating with the fans and then the realisation hits me that we’re back in the top flight.
That’s the dream scenario but the target for me is still getting back on the pitch. That reality is edging ever nearer as my rehabilitation is going really well. I’m doing lots of fast footwork now, more explosive stuff. One legged stuff – the leg that I hurt– and I’m doing the one-hop test.
It’s under controlled circumstances but everything feels like I’m on the right track. The physiological struggle is getting easier but there’s still a mental side to overcome, yet it’s a more conventional one. It’s the lot of all footballers – when am I going to be back? Am I going to get back into the team? How will I react when I do?
There’s still no set time. It’s still way off in the distance, maybe January, but it’s a measure of how far I have come on my journey back from injury that these are the kinds of things I’m starting to think about.
There’s another issue on the horizon. My non-playing contract is up at the end of December and I have not spoken to St Mirren. That will be something that I will have to chat to my agent Mark Donaghy about.
Do St Mirren want to keep me?
Are they prepared to let me go or will they want me to continue in a different role? By then I will have a better idea of how far away I am from playing and then I can have a chat with the gaffer and the club.
If I do get another non-playing contract and I continue in my opposition scouting role for St Mirren then I may have a dilemma. Say someone offered me a playing contract at reduced terms and I have a deal on the table from St Mirren to continue as a scout which offered more security, it would be a really tough choice to make but I would always choose the opportunity to play. It’s what you start out in football to do. You want to prolong it for as long as possible and, ultimately, it is what I have been striving to achieve since sustaining my injury this year.
I want that to be with St Mirren. They have been brilliant with me the whole way through and I would like to repay that faith. They showed that as a club they have a conscience, and they have looked after me in a way that other clubs might not have done.
But I don’t know what the end result is going to be. There might be other options there that might not mean playing, either as a coach or something else.
I will have to make a decision on what it is I want the rest of my career to be – whether it’s playing part-time football or coaching. It’s now about having to look after the family, so if someone offered me a massive contract to coach I would have to seriously consider it but my first choice is to play.
Sometimes you just have to take an opportunity that is there. I have sampled the coaching side and I want to exhaust the possibility of playing. But I have been in the game long enough to know what can happen, it is as simple as that.
Whatever happens, I would love to be at St Mirren. I was staring down the barrel and they did the right thing by me. I would have had to source physios and rehabilitation facilities for myself so I feel I owe them something. It has strengthened my bond. I have always given everything for every club and it has been the same with St Mirren, but with the way they have looked after me I want to repay them.
Who I might do that against, I don’t know. My daydream isn’t that detailed and the Championship is wide open. It could be Livingston, Dundee United or Dunfermline – I’m not fussy who I score that winner against!
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