Davidson played whole season with ankle injury

As he gears up for the new season, St Johnstone midfielder Murray Davidson has revealed that he played with an ankle injury from day one of the last league campaign,

The former Livingston man had a tidy-up operation last month after Saints had secured their place in Europe and is now only a week away from joining up with the rest of the squad for pre-season training.

Davidson is already feeling the benefit of getting a problem sorted out that he had to deal with for the whole of 2016/17.

“The ankle feels good and even a week after the operation I was walking fine,” he said. “We’re in the final stages now and over the next couple of days I’ll be building it up slowly.

“Hopefully by the time next week comes I’ll pretty much be there.”

Davidson added: “It actually happened in the first game of the season against Aberdeen but I kept playing on.

“We looked at it around Christmas time and knew that we needed to do something. We tried to keep going.

“It got to the stage where we made a decision with two weeks of the season to go, so it gave me the best chance possible to get ready for the start of this season.

“A cyst had formed and it was drilled away. There was a wee tidy up to one of the cartilages, nothing major.

“It’s one of those things but now the ankle feels better and, as I say, it’s in the final stages to now crack on. It was worse training because I was missing days due to the ankle being too painful.

“During games it was sore but you can get through them with adrenaline. In training I was having to take painkilling granules and ibuprofen which I don’t like doing – but I had to.

“I’ve said to the physio that, the way it feels just now, then I could do everything. But we don’t want to go in too hard and have a setback.

“The plan is that all going well I’ll be as close to full training as possible next week.”

Davidson is keen to be back on the training field as soon as possible, as the Perth club’s return to Europa League action is looming large.

He said: “Sitting here now it’s less than three weeks until our first game in Europe.

“You are preparing for it straight away and that brings an excitement. It’s something we have savoured for five out of the last six years.

“The whole place gets a buzz and we will be looking for a good draw. Hopefully we can do well because we feel that in a couple of the years we have let ourselves down results wise. On the other hand, we’ve had some great results.

“But we feel we are more than capable of going on a good run. This is something to look forward to and we’ll all be prepared.”

Davidson is something of a European football veteran, having been at McDiarmid Park for every one of Saints’ recent campaigns.

He recalled: “I remember the first year playing against Eskisehirspor and it was all new to us – playing in the heat and over two legs.

“It’s completely different in Europe and teams play at a different tempo too. A lot of the squad have now experienced the travelling, training and the whole Thursday night set-up.

“It will be new for some of them but for me personally it definitely helps and you know what to expect.

“You want a draw where you can get as much information on the opposition as possible so it’s more like a normal game.

“There have been a couple of years where we’ve played teams who we’ve not known much about.

“You don’t want it to be like two years ago when it was a seven-hour flight to Armenia, which wasn’t ideal. And then 40 degree heat.

“But by doing that you can only learn. There is a lot of experience in the squad and I’m sure we’ll be ready when it comes around.”

Saints will play Sunderland in a McDiarmid Park friendly on Saturday July 15 (kick-off 3pm).

Picture: Perthshire Picture Agency. Saints star Brian Easton enjoyed a return to training yesterday with some work in the weights room.

Picture: PPA. Murray Davidson builds up his fitness with a session in the gym yesterday.