‘I'M JUST GLAD TO BE BACK PLAYING'

DUNCAN Watmore could be forgiven for resenting a body that has all too often caused heartache and pain.

- Chris Dunlavy

It has cost him his status as a Premier League player. Condemned him to four years of lonely rehab. It has lost him a job and, very nearly, a career. But he doesn’t.

“Honestly, I’m just grateful to be playing,” says the 26-year-old, now at Middlesbrough after being released by Sunderland in the summer.

“The injuries I’ve had, a lot of people wouldn’t ever be able to play again. Especially a few years ago. All the treatment and physio and rehab - if that didn’t exist to the standards it does then I wouldn’t be playing today.

“So no, I don’t resent my body. I don’t hate it. I’m just happy it still works because there was a very real possibility I wouldn’t be able to play football again.”

Watmore was playing in the Premier League for Sunderland when he suffered the first of two ruptures to the anterior cruciate ligament in his left knee. It was December 2016.

Aged 22, he had just won the Toulon tournament with England Under-21s. Jermain Defoe, a team-mate at the Stadium of Light, compared the young winger to Gareth Bale. “An exceptional talent,” said the striker.

The second struck the same knee exactly 12 months later, six games into Watmore’s comeback. Between that day and the start of the current season, he played just 11 times, beset by the niggling muscular injuries that often accompany such a lengthy lay-off.

“There were times when I doubted I’d play again,” admits Watmore. “Plenty of times, if I’m honest. When nothing seems to be working and the prospect of playing is so far away. But that’s when you’ve got to keep grinding, keep persevering.

Frustrated