James Morgan is talking about titanium wrists, hip operations, moon boots and plantar fasciitis injuries. He’s talking football. Specifically, he’s talking about getting back playing it again.
The Crossmaglen and Armagh defender has endured his fair share of injury setbacks over the years. He has won 10 Armagh senior football championship medals with Crossmaglen, but for three of those campaigns injury curtailed his involvement.
He was not on the field as Cross beat Clan na Gael last Sunday, but he was able to join the squad in the dressingroom. Small steps, each one taking him closer to a comeback.
“I’d like to be playing football in January,” he says.
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Morgan underwent hip surgery roughly six weeks ago. It was his second such operation, the first was because of a car crash in 2013 when he suffered a dislocated hip and a broken arm. There were fears at the time his playing days might be over, but Morgan recovered to play again for both club and county.
But it is not only the hip surgery he is rehabbing right now, the 31-year-old also had a titanium anchor inserted in his right wrist recently after rupturing ligaments, having previously had the same procedure on his left. If that wasn’t enough, he is dealing with a troublesome plantar fasciitis (foot) injury as well.
However, Morgan is refusing to take a glass half-empty view of his current situation and he intends to be playing again early in 2024.
“I definitely, 100 per cent can get back from this,” he says. “I’ve had a similar operation on my hip before so I know the stages of recovery and the process, it’s a three- to four-month operation that you can recover from.
“The wrists, again I had the same operation on my left hand, so I know the process of that. I have weak wrists, but I’ve got titanium wrapped around them now which will maybe bolster them for a while and get me a few more years of football.
“The foot is the only one that is stalling the recovery a wee bit. The injury is on a tendon and the tendons are a lot slower to heal and you don’t get a direct timescale, you have to play it as it lies and wait for yourself to progress.
“I’m hoping I can get the foot cleared up and push the other injuries on and I’d like to be playing football in January whether that’s with Armagh or Cross – it would be great if Cross were still playing football in January. We’ll see what happens.”
But if getting back is one endpoint, then getting back to the level required is a different destination entirely. Should things work out for Cross and Armagh, then 2024 could be a big year for both, and Morgan is determined to be a part of those journeys.
“I’ve had the hip injury before and if anything I think this injury will improve my playing ability, it will improve my ability to train back-to-back,” he reasons. “In recent years I’ve struggled to put back-to-back training sessions together because of those previous hip injuries and then when I hurt it again in the summer it gave me the opportunity to say, ‘right let’s go in and get this fully cleaned out and see if I can be a wee bit more mobile and take this block of strengthening to get ready for football.’ We’ll see, time will tell.”
The accumulation of injuries has not sparked reflection within Morgan of possibly hanging up his boots, instead his periods on the sideline have only served to increase his desire to be out in the middle of the action.
“You can look at it in two ways,” he explains. “You can say it’s not worth the hassle or you can see what boys are doing around and be envious in a way and think, ‘I want to be there too, look at what the senior team are doing with Cross, look what Armagh are achieving, I want to be part of that.’
“And when you are in that environment of the physios with Armagh or the club system as well, you can use that to get yourself back. Without football, would I rehab myself to the same standard? Probably not. But even when I finish playing, I aim to be living a healthy and active lifestyle. That starts with getting myself right, and I’m in the best environment to get myself physically fit.”
Kieran McGeeney will be staying on as Armagh manager in 2024, for what will be his 10th season at the helm, making the county’s former captain the longest serving manager in the game.
“Armagh want Kieran McGeeney behind the wheel,” says Morgan. “A lot of the group of players are at the age where we’ve built something up and we want to see it out with that man and see it out together, so I don’t think it would have made any sense chopping and changing that at this stage.”
– James Morgan was speaking at the launch of the 2023-24 AIB Club Championships.
