Josh Harrop - The Game's Gone podcastJosh Harrop - The Game's Gone podcast
Josh Harrop - The Game's Gone podcast | The Game's Gone podcast
The midfielder spent five years at Preston North End after joining from Man United
Josh Harrop has revealed how he trained alone at Preston North End prior to his departure in September 2022.
The midfielder was snapped up by the Lilywhites in the summer of 2017 after he opted to leave Manchester United. Harrop featured regularly in two of his first three seasons at Deepdale, with almost all of the 2018/19 campaign missed due to an anterior cruciate ligament injury.
After finishing the season after with eight goals in all competitions, though, Harrop barely played for PNE over the next two campaigns, with brief loan spells at Ipswich and Fleetwood. Harrop’s football for Preston mostly came under Alex Neil with only a handful of appearances made for Frankie McAvoy and Ryan Lowe.
Nine months into the latter’s reign at Deepdale, it was confirmed that Harrop’s contract had been terminated by mutual consent. Speaking to the Game’s Gone podcast, he has now opened up on the injury woes which plagued his last few years at North End - and explained how his final weeks at PNE played out.
“The back end of Preston was probably one of my hardest times in football,” said Harrop. “I’d done my ACL but recovered really well from that. My season after that was one of my best in the Championship. I had a year left on my contract and clubs were looking at me, trying to sign me. I think Norwich and other clubs were speaking to my agent at the time and then I don’t know what happened.
“One month I scored three or four goals and I was nominated for Championship Player of the Month. The next month or two I just didn’t play a game. It just didn’t make sense to me at the time and from then, I never consistently played for Preston after that moment. I think I signed a new deal, three years, then got this injury which was so strange - a tendon injury behind my knee, where your hamstring attaches.
“I just remember feeling it one day and played on it for a couple of months, but it was sore. It was just never going away. The physios were telling me it was just fluid behind my knee - they couldn’t really work out what it was. That is when I went on loan to Ipswich and they knew about the issue. They scanned me and I failed a medical at Ipswich for this issue.
“They wanted to sign me anyway. Looking back, I should never have gone. I should’ve recovered the issue. I knew I wasn’t right; I knew I wasn’t properly fit. I went there for six months. It was a bit of a mess. After I came back I said to the physios at Preston that I couldn’t play on this anymore. I was training, coming home and couldn’t really walk. I just couldn’t shake it off.
“When I came back for pre-season I said I wasn’t training until it was right. I think they thought I was lying, or making out that the issue was worse than it was. I’d seen all the specialists in Manchester; I went to a specialist in London. The guy said he had only seen it in five or six athletes. The hamstring tendon had thickened and every time my knee extended, it flicked against a bone which caused it to be inflamed.
“Honestly, from taking five months off (training) it didn’t feel any better. Come to January, I had not really trained for four or five months. The club said I was running again and I needed to go and play on loan. I think I’d trained a week. In my head I was just thinking: ‘This injury is not getting any better; I need to play’. It was the last day of the window and my agent said Fleetwood would take me.
“This is where I probably messed up in my career; I should’ve just dealt with this at the time but as a player, you’re eager to play. I went to Fleetwood, trained on the Friday - my first intense session in five months - and then I started on the Saturday. I took a corner and just felt it (my hamstring) rip, one minute into the game. I was out for 12 weeks and at that stage, I looked at my mum and dad in the crowd.
“They were crying; I was crying. I was just mentally drained at that point. I couldn’t even walk. I was on crutches. That was a dark time for me because the mental weight of this tendon pain, before I’d even gone on this loan, my day-to-day life was getting ruined. I couldn’t have fun anymore. I remember saying to my dad that I might just have to give up. I couldn’t shake it off.”
His exit from Preston North End
“When I came back for pre-season, Preston were just like: ‘Listen, you’ve been in and out for 18 months - your body is not robust enough to play a season for us. You have pulled your hamstring, you’ve got a year left on your contract, I think it is best we go our separate ways’. At that time, I understood that situation and got it. They were paying me a good amount of money and I wasn’t playing.
“But, I don’t think they realised the headspace I was in. The way they dealt with me - I had been at that club for five years. They do it at a lot of clubs... they want you out, don’t they? They want to do it in a way where they kind of push you out. So they were like: ‘You are not going to train with the lads now. We are going to give you a time slot to come in and do your own training’.
“I wasn’t a bad egg. I wasn’t going to cause problems, or be toxic in the changing room. I am not someone who would do that kind of stuff, and you don’t need to do that to me. The manager didn’t want people who weren’t going to be in his team next season, around the squad. Fair enough, and then I got the text that my schedule was like four/five o’clock every day of the week - when everyone was out of the building.
“I rocked up to train at Preston, bearing in mind I knew everyone there. There was a new guy there, sports science. I came in and he didn’t even look at me. I walked past him and he didn’t even say ‘Hi’. I was like ‘Is this how it’s going to be? People aren’t even going to look at me?’. I’d not done anything wrong, said anything wrong, just had injuries and not been able to play.
“I was coming in at five o’clock and my brain was battered from the last two years anyway, so mentally drained. I turned up first session and the physio was like: ‘I think you’ve just got to do it yourself’. I was there at five o’clock, they didn’t leave anything out for me and the ball rooms were locked. I couldn’t even get a ball or cone out. I understand why they do it but I needed support more than anything - not to be training on a pitch with no equipment.
“I ended up speaking to my agent; I did it for a few days. I was setting my own sessions up, looking on YouTube at ball sessions and what I could do to stay fit. There was nobody ever there. I had to go because you are contracted to train. If they set you a time for it you have to go for it; it is your job. If you don’t go in they can basically sack you. They were pushing me out but not in the right way; not in the nicest of ways.”
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