Patrick McEleney ready to put 'painful' year behind him after successful Achilles operation

Patrick McEleney is confident that he will soon return to 100% fitness after undergoing a successful operation on BOTH his achilles tendons in Sweden.

The Derry City captain had a year to forget in 2023, starting just 10 league games in all and not completing 90 minutes since the end of March due to an injury which prevented him from even training on a week-to-week basis.

Admitting that he was in agony some weeks leading into games, McEleney was unable to influence games as he would have liked, with a solution desperately needed as the campaign reached its end. That solution came in Malmo just three weeks ago when he finally went under the knife to fix a long-standing and frustrating problem.

“I was relieved,” he admitted. “Loads of people were asking me if I was nervous going into it, but I was just desperate to get it done. “Desperate” would be the word, so I’m just glad it’s done now and I’m back.

“It was just a painful year all round. I couldn’t really train properly and I was just in agony playing all the time. People would have come to me and said “You looked alright” and “You didn’t look as if you were in pain”, but obviously needing double surgery was the answer.”

McEleney is keen to look forward rather than behind, but he will never forget just how difficult it was at certain times of a painful season.

“It was disheartening,” he acknowledged. “I obviously knew I could only give a certain amount. It was picking days to try and train and then some days it wasn’t good when I was training. We played Dundalk away and we had suspensions and injuries and I had to play. The whole week leading up to it, I was in agony, but you have to put on a brave face for you and for everybody, and then I played the full game down there and we won.

“Then we played in Europe against KuPS and it was the same thing, it was putting on a brave face to try and play and then get through it." 

Confirmation

It was only when McEleney arrived in Malmo however that he discovered the true extent of his problem, with both Achilles needing to be operated on.  

“There was a bit of uncertainty because I knew I was in trouble with one of them and both were sore the full time,” he continued.

“I went over and they scanned them and they told me the both of them were bad enough and they both needed fixed.

“That was the fear for me because I knew that the other one was going the same way. It needed fixed anyway so I was just glad that happened. It was straightforward and everything has been fine; I’ve actually been doing rehab for the last 10 days and hopefully I’ll be back running in the next couple of weeks.”

The Derry City players will return to pre-season training soon ahead of the 2024 campaign and McEleney fully expects to be a part of that, and injury free for the first time in too long.

“It’s crazy how quickly you can come back from it, and how simple it was to fix,” he said. “It was just something needed removed, but the pain that it was causing was a disaster, it was bad, and whenever they fix it so quickly you just ask “Really, was that all it was?”. I’m just happy now that it’s all done. I can’t wait to get going now. I wasn’t able to train properly for a full year. It was mentally draining. But it’s all behind me now. That’s all I keep saying to myself now, it’s fixed and it’s done and I just hope that it feels great now when I come back.”