Luke Shaw's Journey: The Challenge Of Returning After A Broken Leg

With Manchester United's Luke Shaw on the brink of a return from a broken leg, former Nottingham Forest left-back Gregor Robertson shares his experiences of recovering from such an injury, including the physical and mental challenges that the England international will have faced...

I don't think I'll ever forget the feeling that night. It wasn't so much the pain, it was the shock: a jolting trauma I'd never experienced on a football pitch, and an almost instant fear for the future.

It was an innocuous-looking tackle. My outstretched leg planted in the ground, the force of his sliding challenge too great for it to bear, and snap - what sounded like a shin pad breaking was my tibia and fibula giving way beneath me.

I screamed and reached out a hand for help. But when my team-mates came closer, many turned away the second their eyes caught sight of my leg, lying there on the grass, pointing in an unnatural direction. I couldn't see it, and I didn't want to, either. But I knew.

As I lay in the middle of the pitch at Saltergate, Chesterfield's rusty old corrugated-iron stadium, body crumpled forward, scared to move an inch, my head began to whirl with a surreal, slow-motion, almost outer-body sense of dismay - the type you get when you question whether something is really happening to you at all.

As the oxygen arrived, and reality returned, my heart sunk and tears filled my eyes as I contemplated the impact one jarring moment was going to have on my career - and my life.

Since that night, whenever I see or hear of that injury happening to another player, knowing just how it feels, and what lies in store for them, I get a little shiver of sympathy and regret.

Watching fellow left-back Luke Shaw break his leg in September last year was no different. But news of his return to training last week, not even seven months since the event - encouraging as it is - was something I met with more than a little caution.

Immediately the question of when he will return to first-team action arose. After all, Manchester United could do with his services and - with the European Championship looming large on the horizon - England would very much like to have him fit and available for selection, too.

Getting out onto the grass after six months stuck in a gym or swimming pool is a huge landmark, even if he is still working with the physios. But he still has a very long way to go.

On my first day outside in the fresh air and sunshine, seven months after my leg break in 2009, as I jogged around the pitch, my Chesterfield team-mates gave me a little round of applause. Footballers' humour being what it is, one of the lads then started to hum the circus theme song, because I still had a bit of a limp - understandably! But they recognised the effort I'd put in to get to that point, although it was still several months before I was ready to play a game for the first team.

Shaw will have had the very best medical care that money can buy and while Chesterfield are no Manchester United, I'm sure we will have shared many of the same experiences.

The first two weeks after my injury was probably the worst period of my life. The operation is a massive trauma for the body. It involves fitting a titanium "tibial nail" down the centre of your shinbone, using a hammer, secured at both ends with screws in the ankle and below the knee, in holes bored out with a drill. I know, it sounds like something from a hammer horror movie, doesn't it?

After my op, I came round, looked down at my leg which appeared twice the size, and begged for more morphine to send me back to sleep. It was the longest night of my life. But incredibly, the next morning the physio came to get me out of bed to stand on my own two feet. I thought he was mad, but he assured me the leg was going nowhere - the metal in there would see to that - and the two ends of the bone needed to be "stimulated", or pushed together, to encourage them to knit and repair. Gravity is not your friend after an op like that and when I put my foot to the floor I nearly fainted.

After five days in hospital I spent the next month in my house with occasional but dreaded trips to the toilet the only time I left my sofa or bed. I was given exercises to try to maintain the muscle in my leg; tensing your quad and raising your leg up and down, very simple things that shouldn't leave a professional athlete out of breath in a hot, sweaty mess, but did. Playing football again seemed unimaginable.

Every month I visited the surgeon who had my leg x-rayed to monitor progress. Slowly but surely I saw on the images the clean, razor sharp fracture - the gap between the bones - become surrounded with white cloudiness and gradually disappear as the calcification and healing process advanced.

On one early visit, he insisted I perform some one-legged squats on my broken leg right there in front of him in his office. I was still limping around on crutches, and he was asking me to put my whole body weight through my broken leg? A few false starts later, I was doing it, and I left his office without the crutches. That's one small example of the psychological hurdles you have to overcome - sometimes with a push - almost daily as part of your rehabilitation.

That's why the greatest test for a footballer who breaks his leg is in his mind. There are so many steps to be taken on the road to recovery. Conquering each one is like placing another little piece in a puzzle, that only when complete, will mean you're ready to play professional football again.

Repeating the same resistance exercises in the gym day after day, month after month, spending all your time in doors when all you want is to be out on the training ground with your team-mates requires real fortitude, but guarantees that when you have recovered, you'll never take your job for granted again.

There are still many hurdles for Shaw to overcome, but there is light at the end of the tunnel. The first day he touches a football will be tentative at first but for me was a day of pure joy, like being transported back to playing with a ball in the playground. His workload will build up steadily: running, jumping, changing direction, and the body may throw up other aches, pains and injuries along the way.

He will know he's getting close when he joins in training sessions as a "floater" who can't be tackled, which is often the first way of introducing you back in to training. But the biggest test will come when he has to put his leg in harm's way. None of the work with the physios or strength and conditioning coaches can prepare you for that moment, when instinct and reaction in the heat of the moment means putting your leg into the unknown.

My first big tackle was a crunching 50/50 against a Port Vale player who was no shrinking violet. I felt the shudder through my leg but when I got up, dusted myself down and ran off I knew the injury was behind me. I look forward to seeing Luke Shaw tearing down that touchline, setting up chances and doing the things we know he does so well. But I look forward even more to seeing him emerge from a crunching 50/50, knowing that the memory of that September night, and the trauma that one jarring moment brings, is well and truly consigned to the past.

Credit: Skysports.com