Town central defender Tommy Smith admits he shed a tear when he was told there was a 10 per cent chance his career might be over before he underwent back surgery in mid-September. Thankfully, the 26-year-old’s operation went well and he should be back in training later this month.
"It’s coming on slowly but surely,” Smith told Saturday’s Life’s a Pitch in an interview which can be found here in full (01hr 51mins 00secs). "I’m slowly stepping up the rehab every week and it’s getting there slowly.”
He says he wasn’t expecting to go under the surgeon’s knife: "I went to see the specialist, I’ve had an ongoing back problem for a number of years, just with a view to having a routine injection to settle down a disc which was inflamed.
"But I got down to the specialist and he said, ‘No, I’m cancelling the injection, you’re going to have an operation’, because the nerve had been compressed so much by the disc that it may have caused permanent damage if it wasn’t seen to very quickly.
"It was scary stuff and out of the blue as well, I didn’t expect that. I had to quickly get my head around that.
"I took myself off for five minutes, I actually shed a tear, to be honest, just because of that unknown factor, any operation is a major operation.
"He actually said there was a 90 per cent chance it would be successful. I asked him about the other 10 per cent and he said, ‘You might never play again’.
"That hit home at the time, but thankfully the operation has gone really well and since then it’s been about slowly building up the muscles and getting the proprioception back to where it needs to be.
"I’m hoping to be out on the training pitch at the end of December, but then I’ll probably need a whole mini-pre-season to get back to match fitness and be ready to play for the first team.”
During his time out Smith, who is in the dissertation year of a Sports and Exercise Science degree through Manchester Metropolitan University, has returned to the New Zealand fold: "I had a good chat with the New Zealand manager Anthony Hudson and we cleared the air really because there were a few issues previously.
"I’m really looking to be back involved. It’s a privilege and an honour every time I pull on the shirt for the All Whites and I’m really looking forward to getting back into it.”
The centre-half has previously featured for New Zealand at the 2010 World Cup and at the 2012 Olympics and he now hopes to be involved in their next 2018 World Cup qualifiers against Fiji in March, first away and then at home, and then at the Confederations Cup in Russia next summer, having first made his Town return.
"Definitely, but I need to get myself fit first and foremost and then hopefully I can get back into the Ipswich team which will put me in the New Zealand manager’s mind for the March international window and then we go from there.”