Daniel Udoh 'cannot wait' for Shrewsbury Town return after injury lay-off

The forward, who scored 16 goals last season in all competitions, has not played since he went off with a knee injury in Salop’s 1-1 against Bristol Rovers at the end of August last year.

It turned out the 26-year-old had ruptured his anterior cruciate ligament, and now he is more than six months into his rehabilitation.

A couple of weeks ago, he told the Shropshire Star he was hoping for a pre-season return to action, and he says he cannot wait for the feeling of being back on the football pitch and scoring a goal.

“It will be unreal,” he said when asked about his return to action.

“But like anything, I need to try and keep my emotions out of it and just remember to be present as much as I can knowing that I have come that far.

“I just want to enjoy it and enjoy being out there again, hopefully, if I can get a goal on that day it will be even better, but I just cannot wait.”

It has been a difficult period for Udoh, who has had to watch his team-mates have a successful League One season to this point – they are currently 10th in League One with nine games to play.

He has had George Nurse for company, though, the wing-back did his ACL just a few weeks after, and Udoh says it is the time frame that is daunting.

“It is the timescale that is more challenging, not playing football for this long,” he continued.

“I am six months in and I am in a happier place now, but when you first hear it you just think how am I going to not play football for nine months. I could not believe it, all I wanted to do was get back, play football, and build on the season that I had last year.

“I wanted to forget about last season, and I wanted to build on this season to go again, because that is what it is, every time we play every year we start getting questioned again and you want to be ready to go, and then that happened.

“You want to play football, and if you can’t do that you start thinking other things like ‘what am I going to do with myself?’

“We almost put our identity in football sometimes, as that is the nature of the job, we are only focused on football, football, football.”