David Hiftle is set to make his long-awaited return to the Morpeth Town team after spending a lengthy period on the sideline injured.

Hiftle suffered a rupture to his Posterior Cruciate Ligament in his knee (the same injury which ended Zlatan Ibrahimovic’s season).

He suffered the injury in a tackle in April 2016 and missed the end of the season including the FA Vase final and the whole of the 2016-2017 season.

Co-managers Nick Gray and Dave Malone are pleased that Hiftle has finished his rehab and they’re now hoping he can get back to where he was at before his injury.

Gray said: “He was our most consistent defender that season, and I was personally gutted for him, missing out on Wembley.

“I’ve had him as a player since I’ve been at Morpeth. Dave has had him as a player for well over 10 years with his Sunday team too.”

He had his surgery in early November 2016 and continued the long rehabilitation phase.

Sports Therapist Steven Shaw discussed his rehab: “Dickie’s rehab has been long and has taken a lot of work from him.

“Anybody that has suffered a cruciate injury will tell you that the comeback is tough and the reality is that a lot don’t come back because it’s difficult both physically and mentally to do. I had quite a frank conversation with him at the start basically saying

“Do you want to just get back to work or do you want to get back playing in the northern league?, because the reality is, he’s over 30 and self-employed plus he’s had more than a year out now and it was important that if he wanted to come back playing.

“He would have to put in the work in to give himself the best chance of getting back to where he was. He wanted to get back and his mentality has never wavered the whole time, he’s been outstanding he really has. ”

Hiftle has had rehab sessions with the physios and the surgeon at the hospital and been in the gym some weeks up to five times a week and progress can seem slow and football a long way off when you’ve got a swollen knee, stitches and you’re just trying to get it to bend and straighten properly, so it’s tough.

Then there’s a lot of strength work to be done, initially to the quads and glutes, he’s probably done close to 5000 squats since he had his op, not to mention all the balance work etc it’s complex what needs to be done and it’s really important not to try and rush things and move too quickly too soon, there are specific markers and tests that need to be passed before you can progress things.

With a posterior rather than anterior (cruciate ligament) rehab you have to leave the hamstrings alone and focus on the quads which means in the last month you have to really work hard to then get the hamstrings back to full strength.

He was signed off from the hospital in April and they were really happy with the work he had put in with me in the gym and then we were able to really push on with the more specific stuff to football on the grass. He’s worked so hard, he’s literally done everything that’s been asked of him.

He has gone on honeymoon now so he’s had two weeks off so we’ll need to see where he is strength wise and then gradually build him into the pre-season programme, with us having mostly games there isn’t a lot of opportunities for him to train with the squad so we’ll need to work it all out but the hope is that he will play a part in pre-season which will be brilliant for him to be out on the pitch again he really deserves it.”