Moment Davies knew that injury had been conquered

Apr 16 2008 by Nick Hilton, Liverpool Daily Post

THE moment Steve Davies had been nervously anticipating for the past six months arrived 20 minutes into a reserve game at Prenton Park.

The Pontin’s League fixture with Carlisle last week marked Davies’s first taste of competitive action since he suffered a cruciate ligament injury at the end of September.

Team-mates had gone easy on the tall 20-year-old in training ground practice games, shying away from full-blooded challenges.

But a young professional from Carlisle with no knowledge of Davies’s recent history caught him with a heavy tackle midway through the first half.

Up in the stand a father winced and a mother shouted a curse at the perpetrator. But the young man himself only felt relief as he pulled himself off the turf because the rebuilt knee had taken a knock and he felt nothing out of the ordinary.

Davies said: “I got up and thought: ‘Oh, it’s all right.’ From that moment on I felt everything was okay.”

That incident, more than any other, convinced Davies that he would have a part to play in the final month of Tranmere’s season.

He was given just under half an hour of first-team action in the 2-0 defeat in Nottingham Forest a few days later and could be in line for a start in manager Ronnie Moore’s team at Huddersfield on Saturday.

Davies’s return to action may be too late to significantly help Tranmere’s quest to secure a play-off spot. But it is well ahead of a comeback date predicted by the surgeons who performed the operation in October.

The youngster acknowledges he owes a debt of gratitude for his swift and successful recuperation to physio Les Parry.

Davies recalls: “The first few weeks after the operation was the time when I was at my lowest. At that point I was not able to move around and for someone who is used to being able and active, it was difficult.

“Once I got into the work with Les I began to feel better. We did it step-by-step. Every week we set a goal for me to do something I could not do the previous week.

“If I made it I felt great. If I did not, I wouldn’t let my head go down. Once I was able to go back to training with the lads again, things really began to pick up.”

Parry advised Davies he would probably be given 60 minutes of action in his first comeback game. But the physio with the reputation for pushing recovering players hard, had a surprise in store.

Davies said: “The hour came up and I gave Les a look. He smiled back at me from the dugout. Once he had done that I knew I was staying on for the full game. It was good to get that first 90 minutes under my belt.

“To be playing six months from the time of the injury and five months since the operation is great for me and great for my family. They have been so supportive of me. My parents were with me through all the hard times, when I first had the injury.

“I was thinking at first I would not be playing again until August or September and I am so grateful to Les, he has been brilliant.”

When Davies suffered the injury in a 2-2 draw with Northampton on September 29, he was in the best form of his young career.

A series of compelling performances in the opening two months of the season helped to take Tranmere into second place in the table and prompted transfer bids from Leeds United, which were rejected by Rovers.

Davies went on: “I realised from the start that I had to see the injury as a challenge. Whatever happens to you in football is a challenge. The injury was bad but my job in recovering from it is over now so I am looking to the future and what I can do from here.”

In the short-term Davies wants to play as much football as he can in the remainder of the season. That is likely to be no more than three first-team games unless League One rivals make enough mistakes to allow Tranmere to scramble back into a play-off spot.

There is also the issue of a new contract which was under discussion when Davies sustained the injury. His current deal expires in the summer.