CAN I let you in on something? Believe it or not, football is taking up more of my time than ever. I kind of thought that when I was ruled out for a year with a mangled knee I might find myself at home with the family. But I’m involved with the game just as much, if not more, than I was when I was fighting fit.
I said in my last column that St Mirren had sorted me out with a scouting role. I’m watching opponents every weekend now. There were times when I was on the bench last season at St Mirren when I didn’t get on and maybe we’d won and I felt as if I hadn’t played a part in the proceedings. I was watching the rest of the guys celebrating and not really feeling like I had contributed.
But all that’s changed this season. I went to a Dundee United game a couple of weeks before we played them prior to the international break. I was looking for weaknesses, assessing formations, trying to think of ways in which we could hurt them. I was thinking about what we could capitalise on, analysing areas where they were deficient.
I fed all of that information back to the manager, Jack Ross, as part of my report and, a few weeks later, the boys did their bit by cuffing United 3-0; I felt more pleasure from that than some of the times last season when I’d actually been part of the first-team squad.
It happened again last weekend when they beat Inverness 4-2. Often, I find myself checking the score and the scorers just to try to work out whether the information I have given has worked.
Lewis Morgan was outstanding in those games. You might need to ask my team-mates about this but I see some similarities to me in him. He’s only 17 but he’s a good kid who wants to listen, wants to learn and has good manners. There has been a lot of talk about him getting a move and I read that Burton made an offer for him during the summer but St Mirren want to hold on to him and he’s at the right place under Jack and Fow [assistant manager James Fowler].
The scouting job is good for me. I’m well aware that this kind of experience is equipping me for what might come next in my career. It’s definitely given me a better understanding of the game. Sometimes you can go to a match and watch it without really paying attention but that’s not the case any more. There were quite a few things that I identified prior to that United game, but I won’t be giving any of my secrets away. Jack texted me afterwards and said the team were fantastic and the information had proved to be spot on. It was great for my confidence to get some recognition for that.
This year I missed my first pre-season in 15 years as a professional. But it didn’t really faze me because I was just glad to be back around the rest of the players and involved – plus there are little gains every once in a while that keep my spirits up, like starting to see the muscle definition returning to my knee.
This is my new “normal”. Life is returning to something akin to what it was before my injury. I take the kids to school and nursery. I do the daily commute again to Paisley. A couple of weeks ago I started running again on an AlterG treadmill. It’s an anti-gravity device that was designed by Nasa and it allowed me to start weight-bearing work to test the strength of my knee. When the surgeon took a look at me a few days later he was delighted . . . and surprised.
One thing has led to another. I’m doing biometric work now, just simple stuff like jumping or hopping on to a box. That’s as much of a psychological battle as it is a physical one. You’re constantly asking yourself whether you trust your knee, praying it’s not going to collapse under your weight. But, so far, it’s been good news. Better still, I’ve started running at the side of the pitch and I’m kicking a ball again – passing and short volleying. I have been apprehensive about some of these stages because it has been a slow build up without seeing obvious improvement and then “bang”, I’m suddenly doing things that seemed impossible not that long ago.
I still don’t have the full range in my knee but people who have had these kinds of injuries tell me that you don’t need it – I’m not a yoga teacher; I won’t need to be able to lift my leg round my neck. The important thing is working on extension and hyper-extension and the results have been good.
The last fortnight has been really encouraging. Two Mondays ago I was on the AlterG machine, and on the Thursday I saw the surgeon. On the Saturday I was at Morton v Dunfermline and then on Radio Scotland’s Off The Ball. Sunday was my birthday, but I spent most of that helping out with Motherwell Under-15s.
You see? Non-stop football.
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