By David Pritchard
Simon King has cleared an important hurdle in his rehabilitation from a serious ankle injury but it’s still far from certain whether the defender will return for Gillingham this season.
The 26-year-old damaged ankle ligaments falling awkwardly in a pre-season friendly at Bromley last July. It needed surgery to correct the problem and although King came off the crutches in October, he only got the go-ahead from specialists to begin jogging this week.
The centre-back’s programme began with only a few minutes light jogging on Thursday. After such a long time out, King admitted before the session he dreaded suffering a set-back.
“It’s that nervous anxiety feeling where I’ve never been so scared but also I’ve been looking forward to this day for months,” he said. “It’s mixed emotions – I think the only thing in my head is I don’t want to get too disheartened if it is a bit painful, because obviously I haven’t jogged for six or seven months.”
King is on course with his recovery, but must still take his rehabilitation on a day-by-day basis. If Thursday went without a hitch he was expecting to be in again today, slowly increasing the time and intensity.
Although there are three months of the season still to play, there is no guarantee of recovering match fitness in time to make a first-team return. King has held on to the prospect of playing again before May to get him through the lonely weeks in the gym, but he acknowledges it may not happen.
He said: “I think realistically a lot of people say I won’t play again this season, but obviously I’m ambitious and I’d love to play some part. A couple of months from now we’ve got some tough games and if we’re in a relegation battle – hopefully we’re not – you never know the gaffer might not want to put me in there. Ideally for me it would be nice if we had eased away from it and had nothing to play for, then he might stick me in and I’ll get a few minutes.”
Gills boss Mark Stimson has sorely missed King, who he rates as one of the best defenders in League One, but will make sure no short cuts are taken on the path to a full recovery.
He said: “We’ve just got to make sure we keep the reins on him because Simon is one of these players who would play through anything.”
POSTED: 07/02/2010 08:00:00
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