West Ham’s Robert Snodgrass on his remarkable recovery from career-threatening injury at Hull and how he ‘couldn’t watch football’
Robert Snodgrass admitted he couldn’t watch football while battling back from a serious injury that could have ended his career.
Snodgrass dislocated his kneecap on his debut for Hull in August 2014 and needed surgery.
He ended up being out of action for more than a year and struggled while having to watch on as his teammates earned promotion.
He told talkSPORT: “When I was younger I was just floating by in life. I just wanted to wind everybody up. I wanted to prank phone call everybody.
“I just wanted to play football all the time. I always had a ball with me and just wanted a laugh.
“For me, it’s was when I had 16 months out. That’s why I speak a lot about injury. You look at the likes of Andy Murray and his emotions last year, really emotional through injuries and the pain.
“In sport that’s a big factor because even physios will do every thing they can. They will run with you and do all the exercises with you but there’s no guarantee you will come back to any sort of level.
“For me, I was out for 16 months and you do actually feel worthless. You feel as if ‘I’m not part of this here’ because lads are playing every week and it got to a stage where I was six months in, and I speak about it on the podcast, I didn’t watch football anymore. I was desperate to get back."
The midfielder also revealed what his surgeon told him at the time and that his rehab is a success story.
Snodgrass eventually earned a £10million move to West Ham in January 2017.
He said: “The surgeon said to me ‘if you play football at any level again then I will be surprised’. At that moment, it was then thinking ‘if I don’t come back at any level it cannot be any fault except my own’.
“Any exercise you were doing you were doing to the dot and doing every rep you can do. I was probably one of the lucky ones and came back and we got promoted and got a really good move to West Ham.
“There’s a success story there I can tell but the pain was tough.
During the coronavirus lockdown, Snodgrass has started a podcast with Kris Boyd, called ‘’.
The pair have had guests including John Terry, Jack Wilshere and Darren Fletcher.
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Snodgrass added: “It was quite straight forward. I had a phone call with Kris (Boyd) and it was more about the player’s well being. We had a chat about that. He had been speaking to a lot of players and lads had good feedback as everything was up in the air.
"It was all new to everybody. Nobody gave us a script to deal with lockdown. It’s difficult and not ideal but one we can’t stop and must keep moving.
“How can we help others? And that’s the most important thing in this situation.”