Hyland stays positive after horror injury
DROGHEDA United captain Jake Hyland is targeting a return to action in time for the start of next season after breaking his leg in a horror tackle against Shelbourne last week.
The culprit James English was shown a straight red card by referee Tomas Connolly for the challenge in the 37th minute, which left Shels down to 10 men, and the Boynesiders eventually overcame a 1-0 first-leg deficit to go through to the First Division play-off final on penalty kicks.
After spending time in hospital the skipper tweeted ‘Proper gutted but will be back stronger 100 percent thank you to everyone for the texts, top class’ - and the victory at Tolka Park and last Friday’s result against Finn Harps was some consolation for him.
‘James has been in contact with me to apologise. He said it was a really bad tackle and in the heat of the moment, but he shouldn’t be tackling like that - it was a bad one.
‘He let his team down as well, didn’t he, so we came out with the result in the end and I take that as a positive.
‘You have to take tonight’s result [against Finn Harps] as a positive as well. We weren’t beaten and we were the better team, so we’re going up there full of hope and full of confidence we can get a result.
‘The pressure is definitely on them to come out and give a good performance. If they don’t start the game well the fans are going to get on their backs, so we’re looking forward to it.
‘If you get through that you’re only two games away [from promotion], and God knows what can happen, so hopefully!’
Hyland was also positive about the period of rehabilitation he faces following the tackle by the Shelbourne player.
‘It’s a broken fibula, the smaller bone, which is a bit of positive news,’ he said. ‘I didn’t know it was broken when it happened. There were no bones sticking out. But I went to hospital obviously and I found out there’s a lot of ankle ligament damage as well from where the tackle happened.
‘It’s a hard one to take, but I suppose the only positive is that it happened at the end of the season, not the very first game, and I might miss two or four games.
‘I’m going to have six weeks in the cast and then hopefully move on to a boot and see how it goes from there. There’ll be rehab after that and the aim is to be back by pre-season and be able to go up the first day and do a bit of running.
‘I’ll be taking things slowly - obviously it’s going to be a long process - but that’s the plan, to be back by the start of next season.’
The good news for fans is that the 24-year-old intends to stay at United Park for a fourth year and he said it would be ‘brilliant’ if that was in the Premier Division.
‘I hope to be here next season,’ he revealed. ‘I hope to be able to come through Christmas and get myself fit, and then obviously I won’t be back in with the lads straightaway pre-season because I’ll be with the physio a lot.
‘It’s a very long off-season, so that’s positive from my side of things. I have a lot of time off and it’s a good time for rehab, to be able to put my feet up over Christmas.
‘I work as a carpenter, but I’m going to be off work, hopefully only for six weeks, and then get a boot on and see what I can do after that.’