Knee relief for City striker
ROSS McCormack feared his season was over when he injured his knee in Sydney earlier this month.
But so stark was his recovery the Melbourne City striker said he was “wanting to start” in Saturday night’s heart-breaking derby loss to Melbourne Victory at AAMI Park.
McCormack, after playing almost all of the second half of the 1-0 defeat, says he is fully fit to take on Western Sydney on Monday.
And the former Scottish international insists the momentum he was starting to build will not have been stymied by his injury setback.
“Not at all, it’s just a slight niggle. Everyone gets them,” McCormack said.
“I’ve missed the one start, no biggie. We go again on January 1.
“I felt totally fine out there. The first five minutes of the training session I did last Wed- nesday I was a little bit apprehensive, worrying about, ‘What if I turn the wrong way?’
“I’ve done everything I usually would.
“I didn’t hold back because I wanted to test it.”
McCormack landed awk- wardly in the first half of the December 15 loss to Sydney at Allianz Stadium and was taken off the field.
Subsequent reports suggested the Aston Villa loanee had ruptured his anterior cruciate ligament and would need season-ending knee surgery.
But McCormack said such speculation was not necessarily off the mark as he, too, feared the worst.
“After the game the physios tested my knee and it didn’t look good at all,” he said.
“It was in a bad way, so that’s why the diagnosis came out that I’d done my ACL and I was going to be out for six to nine months.
“Thankfully, though, that doesn’t have to be the case.
“I got the scan on Saturday night and it was saying there was a bit of damage in the knee, but not massive.
“I went to see a couple of specialist doctors and they said it’s not really too much to worry about, but the fluid in the knee needs to go.
“It got to Tuesday and the fluid had gone so I did a bit of running and felt fine.
“I’ll just manage it properly over the next seven days.”