Source: FOOTYMAD
I am not injury prone say McPake
Defender determined to shake off injury prone tag Coventry City defender James McPake has said he is determined to shake off the perception that he is injury prone after playing just 37 times for City in his first two and a half seasons. The 26 year old McPake joined Coventry from Scottish side Livingston in 2009, but has spent much of the time on the treatment table with freak injuries. Now McPake is out to prone he can retain his fitness and compete at Championship level by playing for all of next season. He has just one more year left on his Coventry City contract and wants to prove he is good enough and fit enough to earn an extension. The uncompromising defender has impressed in his 37 appearances in the Sky Blue jersey, but he claims that he has been unlucky with freak injuries and insists he is not injury prone. He admits the statistics don't make good reading, but fracturing three vertebrae is not a normal footballing injury. McPake said, “It is not great statistically but when you look at them they have been freak injuries and I feel like I am still defending myself and saying that I am not injury prone.” “There’s not a lot you can do when someone knees you in the back and you break three bones or you dislocate your shoulder as I did in my first pre-season here. My luck has got to change at some point and I am hoping that come the new season that’s me done with injuries.” He continued, “I don’t know if some fans or other managers might think I am injury prone but they just have to sit down and look at them. It is not like I have got an on-going knee problems or anything." “I think I have proved that I am capable of playing at this level and the next thing I need to prove as a person and as a player is that I can go through a full season, so fingers crossed I can do that with no daft injuries and with no-one falling on top of me or something." “I have got another year left on my contract so it’s a big year for me and I just want to get a good pre-season with a few friendlies under my belt and I’ll be ready to go first game of the season.” Speaking about his back injury that has sidelined him for much of the last season, he recalled, “I did it in the Ipswich game on New Year’s Day." "I went in for a challenge with Rory Fallon toward the end of the game and he kneed me in the back but little did I realise the damage that had been done at the time. We didn’t train on the Sunday because we had the game at Barnsley on the Monday and I just put it down to a bruised back, but I started the game and only lasted about ten minutes and then I had a scan the following day which showed three fractures in the middle of my back. “It was a freak injury because I have been kneed in the back plenty of times, but this time it happened to break three bones and after that it was just a case of resting for three months which took me to the end of March but one of the bones didn’t heal as quick as the other two so that ruled me out for the rest of the season." "I couldn’t do anything for two months to give the bones the chance to heal.”
