Former Town striker Darren Bent has recalled the 2001 incident in which teammate Marcus Stewart’s jaw was accidentally broken by fellow frontman Pablo Couñago.

Stewart suffered the injury in November 2001 and subsequently underwent surgery to have two plates inserted into his jaw.

“Another one when I was at Ipswich, it wasn’t even really a dust-up,” Bent recalled on talkSPORT having discussed training ground clashes between players in his time at Aston Villa.

“Basically we were playing five-a-side. Marcus Stewart and Pablo Couñago are at each other, like kicking each other, holding each other.

“Both centre forwards and it was getting a bit naughty, some of the challenges you were going ‘Wow!’. And anyway the ball bounced up in the air and Pablo just goes to volley the ball.

“As he goes to volley the ball, Stewart heads it and Pablo just volleys him straight in his jaw, bang!

“You wouldn’t say it was on purpose but his leg shouldn’t have been where it was. Completely shattered his jaw.

“Smacked, broke up his jaw. We lost him for about two months. You know what I can remember more than anything? The crack.”

Speaking at the time, Stewart said: “Pablo came to see me and was very upset, but it was just one of those things. We both made a wrong decision, I made the decision to head the ball, he decided to boot it instead.”

Photo: Action Images

midastouch added 08:58 - Feb 11 Jean-Couñago Van Damme
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WeWereZombies added 09:12 - Feb 11 Hearing the crack of a breaking bone is a terrible thing, stays with you for a while. I can still remember Mick Mills and Peter Dobing both going for the ball, shins in the air and the awful sound as Dobing's leg broke.
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MVBlue added 10:38 - Feb 11 If we were being honest the cracked jaw cost us at least 6 points and our Premiership status possibly.
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yorkieblue62 added 11:03 - Feb 11 Agree MVBlue. When Stewart returned to fitness Burley couldnt decide between him & Marcus Bent & we stopped scoring. 6 points from last 13 games & 21 years later look where we are
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Cloddyseedbed added 11:40 - Feb 11 Never did like Counago.
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patrickswell added 12:17 - Feb 11 I remember at the time people were searching for clues about why our start to 2001/02 was so poor. All sorts of rumors were flying around including affairs with players wives and fall outs between others. Needless to say, people at the time wondered if it was deliberate on Counago's part. It was all part of the madness of that time. Re: Yorkieblue's comment - Yes, it's heartbreaking to have to admit it, but so many of our issues over the last 20 odd years stem from was done and not done in that season. Players, manager, chairman from that period gave us so much to be happy about and thankful for in the seasons leading up to August 2001, but in different ways they inflicted the initial wound that eventually led to us bleeding out around late 2020. We're on a transfusion now at least.

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carlo88 added 13:35 - Feb 11 We had the players that season, as evidenced by the fact we won 7 out of 8 games between December and January (without Stewart). Something seemed to be going wrong behind the scenes, suppose we'll never know.
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Hatman2 added 22:25 - Feb 13 @Carlo88 You're absolutely right - we had more than enough quality but the mood in the squad radically changed during that season. Dale Roberts became ill and he was an important unifying influence. The injured to Marcus at a critical time. That run of 7 wins in 8 after Christmas (I think we rose to 9th) came to a shuddering halt with the 6 - 0 loss to Liverpool…, and then a 3 week break due to internationals. We needed to get it out our system quickly but had the opposite situation. Burley took them abroad and worked them very hard. Came back jaded, lost 3 - 1 at home to Southampton and only won 1 game between then and the end of the season. Confidence was gone. We should not have gone down but we've never recovered.

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