ROVER BACK TO WRIGHT THE SHIP
ONE frustration has followed another for Joe Wright over the last 12 months, but the Doncaster Rovers man is now itching to get back to his best.
The 24-year-old centre-back has mainly had a watching brief so far this season after suffering his third setback of the past year in pre-season training, making his first-team return against Portsmouth last month having suffered a knee injury against Hull in July.
But it was last November when Wright, enjoying ‘the best football’ of his career to date, ruptured the anterior talofibular ligament in his ankle, opting not to have surgery at the time so he could return within eight to ten weeks.
Things, however, went from bad to worse for the former Wales U21 international 14 weeks later when he re-ruptured the ligament and was forced to undergo surgery in February.
“It’s been a frustrating 12 months,” he admitted. “I was playing probably the best football of my career leading up to the injury, so it was frustrating for me to be out for such a long time when initially it was only meant to be eight weeks.
Pointers
“I only got 15 minutes in extra-time of the play-off semi-final, so it had gone from one extreme high to the season pretty much finished.
“It was really frustrating to get another injury in pre-season, especially when it was something completely different. I’m just hoping to put that behind me now and get back playing.
“I’m looking forward to getting some game time and then
I know the sharpness will come back once I’ve had a few matches.”
Since joining the club in 2016, Wright has been an impressive figure at the heart of the Rovers defence and has also found himself chief among an increasing influx of young talents at the club.
With the prime of his career still in front of him, Wright is keen to stress that he is a work in progress and believes the arrival of former West Brom manager Darren Moore over the summer will help his development.
He said: “I think I’ve got a lot of learning to do. We’ve got Darren Moore in now who played in the same position as me.
“He played at the top end of football. He’s a person I can learn a lot from and every day in training I’m trying to take points from him to influence my own game.
“He’s always there giving pointers and there are little things that he does that help develop our games. He does a lot of work with the back four too which will give us good habits.
Challenging
“He’s a very positive person. He’s changed the team’s formation a little bit this year and how we play. It’s good, it helps you develop your game and you learn different things from different managers.”
Moore’s side have had an up and down start to the season in League One – sitting 12th in the table, but just three points off the playoffs, ahead of the weekend’s action – but Wright believes that one statistic in particular goes some way to explain their mixed results so far.
“I read something a few weeks ago saying we’ve had the hardest run so far of any team if you take the average league position of sides when we’ve played them,” he added.
“We’ve played a lot of form teams recently and I think we’ve done well to pick up the points that we have. There’s room for improvement but at the same time we’re happy with how we’ve performed.”