After finally going under the knife, pain-free Roofe is now ready to cut to the chase
FOR years Kemar Roofe pushed himself through the pain barrier only to inevitably break down on the other side. Dogged by a succession of injuries affecting his calf muscles, his thigh and his knee, the Rangers forward knew deep down that his ails all stemmed from the hip.
Trouble is the 30-year-old didn’t want to submit to surgery for fear that the extensive rehab would stymie his career.
Having finally relented earlier this year, he now wonders why he was so reluctant. Pain-free and fully fit for virtually the first time since he moved to Rangers from Anderlecht in 2020, he felt like a new player as the season dawned.
His manager would tend to agree. Despite spending a small fortune restocking his frontline for the new campaign, Beale welcomed Roofe back to the starting line-up for last weekend’s win at Ross County and the goal he scored in Dingwall only added to the sense that he will be given the nod again in today’s Old Firm derby against Celtic.
‘I am feeling as good as I have in a long time,’ said the 30-year-old. ‘My body is finally working and I can do stuff that I couldn’t do before.’
When available, Roofe can certainly do things that we’ve not yet seen from the coterie of new strikers brought in by Beale this summer. Cyriel Dessers and Danilo remain works in progress, as do supporting attackers Sam Lammers and Abdallah Sima.
A big player in Rangers’ titlewinning season of 20/21, Roofe has been over the course before. Last weekend’s strike was a case in point as he won a physical duel with County defender James Brown and still contrived an acrobatic finish as the pair dragged each other to the ground.
‘That’s because I was watching WWE!’ he joked. ‘To be fair I am a flexible person anyway, and it was just instinct to do that manoeuvre — it was the only way I was going to make contact with the ball.
‘I had to get my leg there, reach for it and also fight the defender. Thankfully it went in.’
The goal was Roofe’s first since he netted late as a substitute against Livingston in February, completing a season haul of two from only six appearances.
‘A lot of the time I was using desire to get myself through games and through training,’ he says of that campaign of toil in which he was barely available to either Giovanni van Bronckhorst or Beale. ‘I would
‘IT’S A GAME THAT EVERYONE WANTS TO PLAY IN AND PROBABLY THE MAIN REASON THAT PLAYERS COME TO SCOTLAND’
tell coaches and physios that I was fine when I was probably not. That’s just how I am, I want to play.
‘Now I can finally wake up and think: “Yeah, I feel good now”.’
Hip injuries can carry a certain stigma among the football fraternity but, as his appearance count dwindled away towards nothing, Roofe (below) knew he had no choice but to go under the knife.
‘I’d always put the operation off because it was a three or fourmonth rehab,’ he admits. ‘As a player you haven’t got that sort of time. Unless I literally couldn’t kick a ball, I wasn’t going to do it.
‘I thought I could get myself through many years and I did. I’d known about it for years and every physio or doctor I spoke to said “oooof” because it is a big rehab.
‘I only played five or six times last season, we weren’t really getting anywhere and we were out of different cups so it was time for me to do it. I had just had enough, physically and mentally, of pushing through it only to keep breaking down. So I just thought: “That’s it, let me get it sorted”.
‘It’s a relief. I can wake up in the mornings and feel good, not have to worry about what is going to go wrong.
‘In my head I wanted to do things but my body couldn’t. That was sometimes the main battle — me versus myself.’
After surgery, Roofe rehabilitated at the Aspatar facility in Qatar, driven by his will to return to stages like that which awaits today.
There are plenty who regard the 30-year-old as the best finisher at the club. He swerves that particular question but uses it as an opportunity to pay tribute to his father, Glenn, who put in the hours drilling the young Roofe on grassland in his home town of Walsall.
‘I put a lot of work in through my years down the park with my brother and my dad,’ he explains. ‘We’d work on my shooting and finishing.
‘I’d see my friends playing football or on their bikes but they were having a different type of fun. I was down the park for business. Getting it in.
‘Naturally you want to play with your friends rather than be working and grinding at it but I can only thank my dad for that. As a father, I now know that putting in that sort of time with your kids is hard. Especially when you have a job. He did that. So for me it all comes from him.
‘I have worked with very good managers and coaches. We’ve got one here — the gaffer is top. But they have not taught me what my dad did. Simple as that.’
Now in the final year of the contract signed when he moved from Anderlecht for £4million, Roofe’s future will depend on how successful and enduring his recovery from surgery proves to be.
In his first season he played and scored often and was also a contributor to the European run that carried Rangers all the way to the Europa League final in 2022.
‘I bet no one thought we could do that,’ he quips. ‘We only lost that on penalties which was fine lines. So the first and second seasons were good but the third was terrible.
‘It’s a cliché, but for me it’s always the next game that’s in my head. Can I win? Can I score or create? That’s all I care about. If I do that, the rest will take care of itself.’
The next game just happens to be a biggie. Roofe has played against Celtic on eight occasions but only scored on one, his double contributing to a 4-0 rout in the midst of the lockdown season.
‘Obviously I will never forget those goals but it’s different without a crowd there,’ he admits. ‘It would mean a lot more to be able to celebrate with the fans. But at the same time all we need to worry about is winning, getting the three points. It doesn’t matter who scores.
‘It’s a game that everyone wants to play in and probably the main reason that players come to Scotland.’
With Celtic missing Cameron Carter-Vickers, Maik Nawrocki and Stephen Welsh, Brendan Rodgers will need to go with a makeshift pairing of new signing Gustaf Lagerbielke and either Liam Scales, Tomoki Iwata or, if fit, Liverpool loanee Nat Phillips.
If the prospect of facing a makeshift pairing is exciting, Roofe does a good job of masking it.
‘It doesn’t bother me because these games are like cup finals,’ he insists. ‘People turn up. It doesn’t matter if you have played one minute or the whole season, you have got to turn up.
‘There is no hiding place. No matter who plays, I know someone is going to turn up, so I have to be ready for that.’