Hatch on the road to a quick reovery (From The Northern Echo)

Hatch on the road to a quick reovery

10:46am Thursday 20th November 2008 in

• Skip social links
• Print
• Email
• Comments(1)

LIAM Hatch is making a rapid recovery after surviving a major injury scare in Darlington’s FA Cup defeat at Droylsden.

The game was suspended for over half an hour as the striker lay motionless and surrounded by medics before being taken to hospital by ambulance.

It was feared Hatch had suffered a broken neck, but subsequent examinations proved otherwise and he returned to the North-East on the team coach in the early hours of yesterday morning.

First to attend to Hatch on the pitch was Darlington physiotherapist Will Short, and his professionalism has been commended by assistant manager Martin Gray.

While the game restarted for the 13 remaining minutes of action, Short travelled to hospital with Hatch and was later joined by manager Dave Penney and the squad.

Gray said: “For such a young physio, I felt he dealt with the situation fantastically well.

“There’s certain injuries that some physios might never come across and I would think Tuesday’s would’ve been a new one to Will.

“The way he dealt with it, his professionalism reached a really high standard – that’s the whole procedure, from treating Liam on the pitch to getting him to hospital.

“The manager and the physio were with Liam in the hospital, myself and the players were on the coach. We stayed until late on, after all the X-rays were done and Liam got the all-clear from the doctors.’’ Gray revealed: “We weren’t going to leave until we found out what his condition was and eventually he got the allclear to travel back with us.

“Everyone is absolutely over the moon that he’s making a recovery.

“Whenever there’s an injury you’re always thinking the worst, whether it’s a leg break or something else.

“So when it’s a spinal injury you’re never sure how bad it is.

“Precaution was the most important thing and the football was put to one side. His health was more important than the match, simple as that.”

Hatch is on loan from Peterborough and Posh’s director of football Barry Fry said: “Thankfully Liam is all right.

I spoke to his agent who told me that Liam thought he heard a crack, but luckily they couldn’t find any damage at the hospital and he is just a bit shaken up.”

Table-topping Darlington are at fifth-placed Brentford in League Two on Saturday and will be without keeper Simon Brown, who is on loan from the Bees and not allowed to play. Skipper Steve Foster is suspended, while striker Billy Clark is rated 50/50 to overcome a hamstring strain.

Quakers are reluctant to put a date on when Hatch will return and Gray last night said: “He will be assessed again on Thursday at training.

“He was assessed this morning after a night’s sleep to see how sore he was, and the feedback is that it went very well.

“We’ll see how stiff and sore he is on Thursday. It’s great news that he’s not as badly injured as we feared, but it overshadowed our performance.

“It was very disappointing after how well we did on Saturday (against Lincoln).

“Our league performances have been very good and we’ve got to get back to the standards we set against Lincoln.

“We’ve got two games, Saturday and home to Chester on Tuesday, and then a ten-day break so it’s important that we get as many points as we can from these next two matches.”