The Inside Forward - Injuries

Groin strain? 6 Weeks of rest.

Pulled hamstring? 8 weeks of intensive physio.

Severe concussion? Short sniff of smelling salts, stick you in goal and see how you go.

Two of these are reasonable and judged responses made by qualified medical professionals to common injuries suffered on the field of play. The other is the kind of best guess, fingers crossed and hope for the best type of assessment we’re more used to from our chief first aid officer, a flexible appointment whose sole required qualification is to be able to run very fast with a bucket of water.

It’s easy to mock our magic sponge man as a one trick pony but in his defence he does have an immediate remedy for any situation. You don’t see any Premiership physios having to deal with the aftermath of a typically inept attempt to hop over the electric fence keeping the horses off the pitch, which is of course, zapped testicles. Or having to stem the flow of blood from multiple stab wounds inflicted by a malicious blackberry bush stubbornly protecting the ball booted in there by your uncultured centre half. Both of these seemingly unrelated ailments are, of course, cured by the application of litres of cold water until you’re so drenched you’ve forgotten the original problem.

Unfortunately serious injuries do happen in our lowly league and to such an extent that they can overstretch both the magical powers of the wet sponge and the default backup, the cold spray. In such cases it’s time to call the professionals and thankfully they were already on the premises in one cup final we played. The first 20 minutes saw a dislocated knee and five minutes later, a broken shoulder. The unluckiest player, though, was the third guy who snapped his cruciate ligament in the second half when both ambulances had already gone to the hospital. Our journey to the pub to celebrate victory was decidedly smoother than his trip to the emergency room, where he sat in agony next to the first two injured players.

As for myself I’ve managed to stay relatively injury free, probably more due to the lack of will power to over exert myself than my having any kind of super fit body. Even so it was impossible to avoid the flying elbow one Sunday morning that opened up my head and added a nice streak of red to my shirt. My vision of heroically becoming our team’s answer to Terry Butcher’s famously bloodied performance in 1989 started to blur alarmingly quickly and my garbled insistence that I was fine took a rapid u-turn as I meandered off the pitch.

I’ve always garnered more satisfaction from a perfectly timed tackle than a wild and malicious hack at a player so I’ve never been one for inflicting injuries either. But I do emit a little grimace when I recall the poor guy who got in the way of one of my free kicks. As a guy with a hefty boot I‘m called upon when no one has any other ideas, just give it a lash they’ll say. My technique is basically close the eyes, hit it as hard as I can and hope it doesn’t fly so far over the bar you’ll never see the ball again. All well and good, unless you’re standing in the wall and you catch it full on in the chest. Thunk, down he went, wheezing and moaning so badly even the magic sponge couldn’t keep him on the pitch.

Since then I’ve always made sure to avoid being in the wall, not fancying being target practice for some crazed lunatic with a cannon for a boot a mere ten yards away. Maybe another reason I’ve stayed injury free.