St Johnstone captain Dave Mackay has got his own personal motivation driving him towards a comeback ahead of schedule.
The defender, who could be back in a Saints shirts within weeks rather than months after successful hip surgery at the end of the last campaign, is keeping a close eye on another Perth man’s recovery programme.
He explained: “I have been joining in with the boys for the warm-ups and have been doing a bit of running.
“So hopefully I can pick things up a bit from now on.
“And most of all I want to get out of the physio’s room before Ando comes back.
“I need to get away from there before I have to listen to him.
“I have been texting him and telling him to go away on holiday for a few weeks before coming back in.
“He can’t be coming back too soon, not if I’m going to be stuck in that room with him.
“That will just set me back so I’ve got a bit of motivation to get out of there quickly now.”
Mackay revealed that after he was operated on he was delivered some worrying news. But thankfully the surgeon’s worst case prognosis hasn’t proved to be the case.
He said: “First of all the surgeon told me it might be six months, which shocked me a bit.
“But I always believed it would be around the four month mark and I’m well on schedule for that.
“I was running on the anti-gravity machine so that has really helped me and I’m hoping to step things up a wee bit again this week.
“I won’t be doing full training but I might be able to do the warm up and then a few of the boxes and stuff we do.
“I just want to get back in amongst the boys again.
“I was alone in the treatment room to start with but it has been a busy place in the last few weeks.”
The former Livingston and Dundee man added: “It hasn’t been as bad as I thought it would be but the worst bit was being on crutches to start with.
“I hadn’t had to use them before so I didn’t realise how bad it was, you’re pretty useless.
“You can’t carry anything and you’re basically a nuisance about the house so the missus was happy when I got rid of them.”
Mackay hopes that the surgery will mean the days of regular injections are behind him.
He said: “There was a load of damage to the hip so they had to re-shape it and sort the cartilage damage.
“They had to do a micro-fracture of the hip and that’s why I ended up on the crutches.
“I spoke to the surgeon the next day and he told me there was a lot more damage than he expected to find.
“But he was happy with how it went and it feels great now.
“Touch wood, everything has gone to plan and it’s better now than I ever thought it could be.
“I’d known for a while that my hip was a funny shape but it had just got to the point where I was really struggling.
“I was taking injections to cover up the pain and wasn’t really training more than once every two or three days.
“I’d play then have to recover for a few days, train, play and then have to go through it again.”