Although every fan will accept that injuries are part of sport and they have to be expected, it’s still interesting to see how many different attitudes there are about playing through them.
There’s a typical “old school” attitude of just fight through the pain and give it your all, but players are starting to become more aware of the effects it can have on their career and playing through an injury can just make it worse.
Mikey Johnston is still at that stage where he’s trying to force his way into the team, so it must be sickening to have those opportunities limited by injury.
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You could forgive him for trying to play on to prove he’s tough and that he can be relied on, but perhaps that just made things worse too.
The Daily Record reported on some of his comments about playing through injury this season, and you have to feel sorry for him:
“I had been really struggling mentally with the injury, it was really frustrating because we couldn’t get it right.”
“To come back and score in my first game was unbelievable, you could see in my emotions that I was absolutely buzzing.”
“There’s been so many times I’ve been playing while knowing I wasn’t 100 per cent right. But I always want to play for the team. I wanted to try and push myself through these things, then the knee came.”
“It was just so annoying, that one moment can ruin the season.”
There was a game against St Johnstone where he took some criticism for trying to play through injury when it was clear he couldn’t go on, and Neil Lennon was caught on camera swearing at him, but that starts to make sense now.
Hopefully this break has given him a chance to fully heal and get back up to fitness, so he can come back firing next season.
