FOR most League of Ireland footballers, the mid-season break was welcome, a chance to get away and enjoy a well-earned rest. Not for Jake Carroll.
Having endured almost a two-year gap between first-team matches, the last thing he needed was another weekend off.
Carroll, 32, had just made his Bohemians debut against Derry City, with the Candystripes’ winner coming after he had come off with 83 minutes under his belt.
It was his first outing since July 2022, when the defender played in Motherwell’s opening game of the Scottish Premiership season against St Mirren.
During a set-piece session in training the following week, he jumped for an unopposed header.
The pain was excruciating as his patella ruptured, not from landing awkwardly but from pushing off the ground in the first place.
He recalled: “It was a freak one. There was no warning sign, no pain beforehand.
“They can be quite common in basketball or American football because of the explosive jumping involved.
“I knew straight away it was a bad one. The first question you ask is,
‘How long am I going to be out for?’
“The answer was between one and two years depending on how my body healed.
“I did my best to make it one year but it didn’t work out. It’s a difficult injury to come back from.”
His contract was up at the end of the season and, almost inevitably there had been a change — or rather changes — in the dugout during his lay-off.
Graham Alexander had been fired before their league opener as a result of their Europa Conference League defeat to Sligo Rovers.
Steven Hammell was put in caretaker charge, then handed the job on a permanent basis before being fired the following February, with Stuart Kettlewell hired as his replacement.
He said: “I did everything in my power to get back training before the end of the season but my knee just didn’t recover in time.
“The new manager didn’t know me, he needed to see me at least train but that didn’t happen so there was no chance to earn a new contract.”
Another former ’Well manager, Stephen Robinson, allowed him to train at St Mirren at the start of the 2023-24 season.
Carroll said: “I trained every day for three or four months but I wasn’t on a contract, there was no obligation to sign me.
“He had full cover at centre-half and left-back so it wasn’t going to happen but I just needed to stay fit and ready.”
SETBACK
His readiness to return to action coincided with the start of the 2024 League of Ireland season, or so he thought.
He said: “It wasn’t until January that I came home and there was an opportunity with Bohs.
“I came in at the start of pre-season. The plan was to sign there and then but my knee was still causing me problems.”
It was, he admitted, his lowest ebb as he wondered if a comeback was even possible.
He said: “I pride myself on my mental strength and resilience to keep going but the hardest thing with injury is when you have a timeline and you have a setback.
“I thought it would be a year and it turned out to be two. You would go to a specialist and they’d give you eight weeks to work on something and you do that and you’re no further along.
“I just couldn’t get the strength into my quad muscle to support my knee, no matter how much strength work I put in in the gym, it just wasn’t growing.
“That was the really frustrating part, knowing how many hours I put in, double and triple sessions.
“That was my lowest point but I had good family support, from my dad in particular, who is a good football person with contacts.
“He put me in touch with a private physio, Liam Heavin, and I went to see him when I was mentally struggling.
“I just wanted the guarantee that if I put in the work it was going to work. I had a lot of scans and strength tests and he told me, ‘If you do this, you’ve a really good chance of playing at a high level again’.
“Dave Murphy, the head physio at Bohs, was of the same opinion and we just stripped it all back and tried to build it up slowly over eight, ten and 12 weeks and it worked out thankfully.
“I’m indebted to the two of them and my dad.”
In the meantime, Declan Devine had left Bohs but his replacement Alan Reynolds had made it clear to him that he could be part of his plans.
He signed a contract in mid-May, with his first run-out coming four weeks later.
That he lasted almost the entire game is a tribute to the work he had put in.
He said: “I did anything that I could. If the knee wasn’t right, I was still doing whatever cardio I could.
“I wasn’t nervous beforehand, just excited. With my first touch, the ball rolled under my foot and I just thought, ‘Things can only get better’, and thankfully they did.
“I was getting cramps in a few areas of my body but I expected that.
“There was nothing I could do about it, it was just my body telling me it was at its max as it has to get used to playing again.
“I was gutted with how the game ended but if you’d offered me 83 minutes beforehand I’d have taken it.”
He would have loved to back it up the following week but, when team-mates were on beaches, he was doing extra sessions in the gym with his younger brother Jordan, home after finishing his season with Farsley Celtic.
He said: “I’ve brought myself to a new level of professionalism, doing everything I can to be at my best.
“Before I didn’t understand the importance of strength work, prehab and recovering between sessions.”
He was joined at Bohs this week by his former ’Well team-mate Ross Tierney who he believes can help the side to a better second half to the season.
He said: “Ross will add a lot, he’s deceptively quick and strong.
“When he came to Motherwell for the first couple of training sessions, I’d go up for headers with him, he’s not the tallest but somehow he’d win them and I was scratching my head.
“I came to realise he’s a smart footballer.
Our manager at the time probably didn’t trust him because of his size — he wanted big lads — and couldn’t see past that to see his quality.
“He probably deserved to play more, I’ve no doubts he’ll do very well at Bohs.”
But he is not eligible for the Gypsies’ next game tomorrow which will see Carroll line out at Richmond Park for the first time since leaving St Pat’s for Huddersfield Town 11 years ago.
He said: “There aren’t too many familiar faces bar Chris Forrester and the physio Christy O’Neill but I’m excited to go back.
“We’ve a good squad, we’ve games in hand and I’m confident we can push up the table.”