Nottingham Forest defender Tendayi Darikwa is progressing in his return from a serious knee injury, but will his road to recovery lead to a dead end?
The 27-year-old full-back has been sidelined since the summer.
A ruptured ACL forced him onto the treatment table and under the knife.
Rehabilitation after such a setback is neither quick nor easy.
Darikwa is finding that out the hard way.
Enforced absences are always difficult to take, with professional sport stars not signing up to a watching brief.
That is what the rest of us are for!
Life on the fringes of the fold, stuck in the gym while everyone else gets to kick a ball around outside, can be hard.
Darikwa has little light at the end of the tunnel just yet.
He is having to fill a cheerleader role as Sabri Lamouchi’s side push for promotion out of the Championship.
The hope is that he will have some part to play in that quest.
Timescale
Darikwa has told the Nottingham Post: “It’s a long-term injury, so it’s slow progress. But I’m happy that I am making progress.
“The main thing is just to stay focused on the rehab – do everything that the doctors and the physios are telling me to do.
“Hopefully I can then get back at the back end of the season.
“We haven’t put a timescale on an exact return date just yet, because it’s still so early. But I’m hopeful, with a bit of good luck and a lot of hard work, I might get lucky and play a few games.”
Giving with one hand, taking away with the other – welcome to Darikwa’s world!
He is making ‘progress’, but will need to get ‘lucky’ in order to figure at all in 2019-20.
That suggests there is a chance that an entire season of his career will be written off.
You have to feel for the Nottingham-born Zimbabwe international.
At one stage before he was laid low, it appeared as though a door may be opening for him.
Instead, it slammed in his face.
With Forest short on options at right-back, as Sam Bryam completed a loan spell in 2018-19, a starting berth was Darikwa’s for the taking.
Disaster then struck and he has gone from first to third in the pecking order.
Rehab
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“I’ve not properly had the chance to show him (Lamouchi) what I can do,” Darikwa added in the Post.
“After a long summer, I came back early. In hindsight, that might not have been the right thing to do, but these things happen in football.
“The manager has been great with me. I see him every day at the training ground and he’s just said, ‘focus on your rehab and come back strong, then take things from there’.”
Forest’s coaching staff must do all they can to keep Darikwa’s spirits high.
There is, however, no escaping the fact that his sands at the City Ground have shifted dramatically.
Even when back to full fitness, there is no guarantee that he will see competitive minutes.
Matty Cash, who wasn’t even a defender a few months back, has been starring in the position Darikwa intended to dominate.
Carl Jenkinson – a man with a senior England cap to his name – has also arrived from Arsenal to provide added competition.
He is stuck making friends with the medical staff alongside Darikwa at the moment, but will be back in contention long before a fellow injury victim.
Which all adds up to a rather testing period for Forest’s No.27.
Slow progress is being made off the field at present, and that may continue on it once his knee is finally back to working order.
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