Battling Injury and Recovery for Young Players - Blair Docherty

Tricky winger Blair Docherty started the 2019/20 Lowland League season with a bang. He scored four goals in the opening two games, adding the accolade of first ever league goal scored at Alliance Park to his name. Blair has signed up for the new season and is raring to go and hopes to make amends for missing the majority of last season with a bad foot injury.

As a young player everything was going well for Blair but during the Braves 3-0 victory over University of Stirling, Blair had taken a bad tackle and had to be subbed off.

For any young player this could be challenging but especially a young player who was just breaking into the world of mens football.

We caught up with Blair when he re-signed and spoke about how he felt during this time and if it affected him missing a large part of the season.

When you first came in, it was essentially your first big step up to the men's game, was that always something that appealed to you before signing for the Braves?

I was on loan at Largs Thistle before, that gave me a good grounding for that but after leaving Morton and being in the youth set up there,  making that jump into playing “men's football” was the definitely one of the biggest reasons to wanting to sign up here. 

When you started you got off to a flyer, 4 goals in 2 games and then around September you’ve picked up a serious injury. How much did that affect you coming into the a new team relatively young?

It did a lot to be fair, saying that I had a similar injury 2 years prior but I dealt with the injury better this time around, resting and not pushing too much etc. The club were great with me, Rossco (Physio) was especially brilliant, he got me back as quick as I could. It really affected me though because I was loving the football, playing every week and I was gaining confidence with my good form. I really believe that I would have went on to score more and grab more assists had I not been out for so long so that was really disappointing to cut my season short early on.

Do you think that an injury early on in a career can help you in other ways, like mentality and looking after your body more?

Yeah, that was hard though because in the cast, I couldn’t drive and I live one hours drive from the stadium, its not so easy to get to the ground so it was definitely hard not being in with all the boys every week. Coming back into training it was hard to be motivated, I was working all day to go to training to not get involved. I did love coming in even when I was injured being with the guys and integrating but its hard mentally, you have to tell yourself its not going to be forever, you try looking for steady progressions, they help you visualise the recovery more and understand that its not long until you will be back.

Working with Rossco, did that help you during the full process being in safe hands and around a really good guy at the club?

Yea definitely he was brilliant with me, he didn’t give me un-realistic goals, even when I wanted to be back earlier,  he was honest and that in the end was the best thing for me. All the programmes I was given worked brilliantly everything helped and I’m just really thankful that he got me back as quickly as he could. Hopefully I dont need to see him too much this season!

Do you think that will spur you on for this season knowing how much you missed last year?

Definitely, obviously you can’t judge when you are injured, I won’t take it for granted though when I am playing. I want to give it my all every game, and hopefully I can get that run of form that I did have last year continue it and have a successful season personally and with the team.

Injuries can be tough mentally for players but we are delighted that Blair has come out of his in good light and is really excited about starting off the new season in same fashion he showed last year.

Blair's Re-Signing video is available on BRAVES TV now!