THE FALL AND RISE OF KADEEM
WHEN Cardiff City were tearing through the Championship at the start of last season, Kadeem Harris was housebound, on crutches and getting in his girlfriend’s way.
He had gone under the knife just as his teammates were clinching a dramatic 1-0 win at Burton Albion to kickstart promotion.
So that memorable first stepping stone on the road to the Premier League feels very distant.
Harris, the player who had been nurtured by Cardiff City since the age of 18, played virtually no part in their ascent to the big time.
“It hasn’t been straight-forward for me, but patience has been key and it’s definitely something I’ve become good at,” he admits at the start of this interview, which marks the completion of his renaissance.
From being forgotten and very nearly discarded altogether by the Bluebirds, the London-born winger has already scored and won a Premier League Man Of The Match award in 126 minutes of action this season.
More Premier League appearances now seem certain – but it might have been very different after showdown talks with Neil Warnock in the summer left his Cardiff future hanging by a thread.
Regular football back in the Championship was beckoning. The easy option, you might say. But Harris was handed a lifeline after seeing his name in Warnock’s 25-man Premier League squad.
Others may have grown frustrated and sought a move, especially after Harris’ March return to the Cardiff side resulted in a second ankle injury, meaning he would play in three games last season and no more.
This publication had called that return a ‘second coming’ but it proved to be a false dawn. Harris was going to make sure this one wasn’t.
“I had an operation the first week of last season,” Harris explains.
“So that put me out for three months.
“Then I got injured again – it was a whole different injury but to the same ankle.
“Obviously that was a massive kick in the teeth.
“The team were doing so well and I couldn’t wait to be a part of it. Getting another injury when I came back was a down-time for me, I wasn’t that happy.
“I was down at that point.” Down, and nearly out of the club entirely.
But Harris – whose regular use of the word “positive” throughout this interview is no coincidence – refused to drop his head.
Was there any doubt he would earn another chance at Cardiff, the club who’d plucked him from lowly Wycombe in January 2012?
“No.
“I just tried to think positive,” he adds.
“That’s when you get the best results.
“I was injured when we were on the verge of getting promoted and when we were, I said to myself ‘when we got back for pre-season, I’m going to do everything that it takes to get a chance in the Premier League.’
“I got given an opportunity by being named in the 25-man squad and as soon as that was named, I thought that in itself was a big opportunity and it was in my court.”
Ironically it has been an injury to his closest friend at Cardiff, Nathaniel Mendez-Laing, that has allowed Harris to force his way back into Warnock’s thinking.
That and some extraordinary performances in training, as the boss himself has admitted.
“When I realised I needed to do more was when I came back for my first start, against Barnsley,” says Harris.
“I didn’t feel match-fit when I was playing, even though I’d been training for a while.
“So from that time onwards I knew I had to do more. More sprints, more running – as much as I could to get to that level. Because you can’t enjoy a game when you’re not match-fit.
“There were times when the ball was on, but I didn’t want the ball because I wasn’t match-fit.
“Now I’ve had a good pre-season under my belt, I played quite a few minutes for the first XI and the Under23s.
“That was when I really felt back to my best.”
Harris struck a hat-trick in an 11-1 win over Bodmin in pre-season, a seemingly modest achievement that turned out to be the spark that re-lit his fire. His form this season was rewarded with a goal against Fulham, which sealed Cardiff’s first Premier League win of the season.
And the 25-year-old admits he’s always happiest when performing to his maximum, in games or on the training ground.
He has battled a few demons during the laborious recovery from that 2017 injury, but was aided by unwavering support from his family.
“I was on crutches for two weeks,” he explains.
“There’s a boredom factor and just generally being down because you’re not able to do things that you’d do in a normal day. I’ve got a good family around me and they helped massively with my recovery.
“There wasn’t much I could do. Just upper body sessions in the gym for an hour and half each day and the rest of the day was just keeping busy, with my kids... I couldn’t even do housework!”
Harris couldn’t even use the modern footballer’s traditional method of time-killing.
“I actually haven’t played PlayStation for six years now,” he reveals, before explaining how his two small children have kept him busy enough.
“My PlayStation broke and I just never got it back again.
“Every now and then when I go to Mendez’s house or Bobby’s (Reid), I’ll play a game or two.
“So when I was out (injured) it was all family time. If I didn’t have them, I don’t know what I would have done.”
Now with a very clear vision of the future, it’s about making memories for Harris – with his girlfriend glad to have him out from under her feet.
“She didn’t like me moping around for those few months,” Harris laughs.
“So she’s happy that I’m playing because she knows that’s when I’m at my happiest.
“My little girl is in nursery, so she’s doing her own thing. My boy’s six months old so he’s not bothered whether I’m home or not to be honest!
“You want to give your kids the best future, so playing regularly in the Premier League and doing well would do that. That’s a whole other reason to be successful.”
With his loved ones’ support and backing from the wider Cardiff City family, it seems Kadeem Harris is destined for success after all.