More Bamfoot: ouch Pat this sounds really bad! - The Square Ball 1/4/22

TEARING ACTION

Written by: Moxcowhite • Daniel Chapman

It’s good to know we’re not the only ones obsessing over Pat Bamford’s ruptured plantar fascia, as Sky Sports News filmed an ‘exclusive’ interview with him this week about that, and apparently only that, unless they’re holding more footage back. It might also be that Pazza Bamfs was feeling a little bit singled out after Sky put a forty second video of him crying on their website, and he wanted to put the record straight and point out he had good reasons!

“I know it’s probably been a difficult couple of weeks for you,” the Sky interviewer begins. “How are you feeling since the diagnosis?” And, I mean, it’s only a torn ligament so I’m not sure it needs to be that deep. He goes on, anyway: “We saw you getting quite emotional a couple of weeks ago,” and the whole thing has a feel of, Pat, we all saw you crying and now we want to know why you’re a big cry-baby crier who cries. Are you going to cry now?

Pat, if anything, seems relieved since his partially torn plantar fascia went full rupture, backing up the Aussie Rules advice in our previous investigative reporting, that he should have taken his feet into his own hands ages ago and smashed his foot off a hard surface until it broke. He can’t play now, and Pat says that’s easier than the “grey area” he was in before.

“I was always thinking, oh I could be back this week, I could be back that week, and that’s almost more difficult, because then you don’t hit the markers that you thought you might.” With the fluttering modesty of someone happening to mention at a students union bar about the time he rescued a kitten from a river, he continued, “I was just kind of trying to get through the pain, almost forcing myself back a little bit to try and help the team, because, without wanting to sound, like, big-headed and stuff, I knew that I had a big role to play.”

He also had PRP injections, ‘platelet-rich plasma’, to speed up the healing process; it was a matter of repairing his foot enough so the pain would reduce so he could play, while knowing that not waiting for the plantar fascia to fully fix itself was putting it at risk of rupturing. “I knew eventually it was going to go,” he said, about the fraying rope tied around his waist as he lowered himself bravely down into the fast flowing waters where Tiddles mewled helplessly — oh, no, this is the feet again isn’t it. “It was just a matter of time, really.”

Time, and pain. After the Norwich game, Jesse Marsch said they’d thought an hour of it might be too much for Bamford, and they’d taken him off at half-time because, “we just could see that, physically, it was enough.” Pat agrees. “When I came off at half-time, I was in quite a lot of pain,” he told Sky, with a wry chuckle, and then it was on to Wolves five days later.

“I knew it wasn’t quite right,” says Pat, “and to be honest, going into the Wolves game” — a pause, a head-tilt, eyelashes, it’s like Princess Diana confessing to Martin Bashir — “if I was honest with myself, I should have said no. But when they kept asking, are you alright, do you want to play? I was like, yeah, yeah.”

Pat! Patrick James! No! You’ve got to speak up for yourself! We had Dan James, Rodrigo, Sam Greenwood! Don’t chuckle along with it when your foot isn’t right!

“As soon as I started the warm up, I knew.” Right, so before kick-off, you knew the bottom of your foot was about to snap, so that’s when you told them you couldn’t play the game, right? Wrong! We know you didn’t, because half an hour later we saw you sobbing your toes off!

“And there were like four actions,” in the game, he says, “and I just felt it,” oh no, “slowly,” I don’t like the sound of this Pat! “Tearing,” argh, “and the last action, I just knew that something had happened.”

Well, yes, if the big ligament in the bottom of your foot was slowly rupturing, in four agonising stages, one excruciating action after a tormenting action after a gruelling action after a lacerating action, something was going to happen! This sounds really painful and bad, man. It’s even worse because I’m sure one of those toots-tearing actions was when he was put through by James winning a turnover and dragged a good chance wide of the near post and I muttered under my breath about it being a ‘bloody Championship Bamford finish that’ because I didn’t know that inside one of his boots one of his feet was disintegrating into mangled chunks. That’s what being a trooper gets you, Pat! And now we all feel bad! Although my feet are fine and by the sounds of it yours will be soon too.

The YEP add a bit more from Bamfs about his sobbing fit on the bench that’s not included in the Sky video clip. Maybe he couldn’t keep it together and said this through fresh tears, puking and screaming at them to switch the cameras off. “I was alright coming off, and then it wasn’t until I sat down on the bench that it kind of hit me a little bit,” he said. “But Coops and Kalv were great … It was just nice to know that they are there for me.”

Exactly, and they would have been there for you in the warm-up too if you’d said, I don’t think I can play this game tonight, I can feel the tendons in my foot ripping themselves to pieces with every step. People would have stood up for you, Pat! Someone else would have played! Is nice-vibe Jesse Marsch all live laugh love in the media, but some sort of tyrannical pain merchant behind the scenes? First Tyler Roberts was limping around Leicester with tears in his eyes, and we’ve only Jesse’s word for it that he “was adamant about wanting to stay on.” Now this. How the players must long for a relaxed spot of murderball again. Yes, they can eat from Greggs now, but at what cost?