Jamie Allsop is set to make his 100th competitive appearance for Nostell Miners Welfare this week, two years after fearing that his football career could be over.
Allsop, 24, will become the first Nostell player in a long time to join the small and exclusive 100 club – which also lists Wayne Ball as a member – if Ian Walker selects him for the trip to Teversal on Tuesday.
The left-back made his Nostell debut as a teenager under Darren Holmes seven years ago but two serious injuries between 2017 and 2019 heavily disrupted his career for three years.
Allsop has now battled back to from the woes to become a first team regular once again and he admits reaching the century didn’t seem imaginable two years ago.
“It feels really good (to be almost at 100 appearances),” Allsop told Non League Yorkshire.
“A couple of years ago I didn’t think it was possible.
“During the pre-season of 2019 I felt the best I had for a while after my first surgery and I was flying.
“To break my leg at Horbury a week before the season just kind of killed things.
“That injury hit me really hard and looking back on it I didn’t think I’d make 100 (appearances for Nostell) or get back to properly playing.”
The first injury was an ankle problem related to the discovery of an extra calf muscle around 2017.
The second was the leg break whilst playing for Nostell in a friendly at Horbury.
Many would have struggled to come back but Allsop agrees that the pandemic has helped him return.
“I rushed back before the pandemic and when I was playing it just wasn’t right,” he said.
“I was going to see loads of specialists and getting loads of opinions off people.
“I was googling every possible thing it may be and putting stuff in my head but it was a really low moment not knowing if I’d play again.
“I was 22 at the time and for a footballer that is ridiculously young.
“It would have been difficult (to get back in the team) if it had been a normal time.
“If it had been a year out of not playing football when everyone was playing, I’d have been playing catch-up and would have had to go on an extended pre-season or really work hard.
“That halt of the pandemic has brought everyone down to my level and given me time to get it right and get back playing.”
Nostell are on the up under Walker – a sharp contrast to his early years with Nostell when relegation battles were the norm.
But which are the games to remember?
“There’s a couple of memorable games I vaguely remember from the Darren Holmes era when I started playing regularly,” he said.
“I think the most memorable in recent times was the first game back against Rossington in the FA Vase last season.
“We had been on a long pre-season and been training in groups of six when we could.
“I had been going into that pre-season not knowing if my ankle would be able to cope or if my leg would be able to withstand everything.
“In the six or seven seasons (at Nostell) I’d probably been involved in ten FA Vase and FA Cup games and never won a round.
“The 2-0 win was a good start and it allowed me to push on.”
Allsop’s father Kevin, the Nostell chairman, takes up the story and explains the journey from 2017 when the injury problems started.
“Shortly after we got relegated he went off to pursue his football at Garforth and he broke down towards the end of (the 2016/17) season,” Kevin Allsop said.
“That’s where we found he had an issue after going to see five separate specialists.
“They found that he was slightly unique in many respects in that he had an extra muscle in his leg connected to the bottom of his calf and the bottom of his achilles.
“The specialist at Northern General Hospital in Sheffield was the only physician we had seen over a two-year period who had actually experienced something similar before in a young female footballer.
“She had it in both ankles and the only resolution to it with no guarantees was to perform an operation to take out the extra muscle.
“Unfortunately he didn’t get the advice before he was discharged that they wanted full movement in the ankle immediately and he was in a full cast pot for six weeks.
“When they removed the cast his tib and fib had fused to his foot.
“It took another 12 months of rigorous exercise and specialists before he could get playing again.
“He came back to help out Simon (Houghton) and Jason (Dodsworth) but they clearly never saw the best of him because he wasn’t over the operation.
“Just after a good pre-season (in the 2019), he suffered a broken ankle at Horbury.
“It was a never-ending run of bad luck and he’s effectively had three-and-half-years of bad luck and he’s still managed to come up with 100 competitive appearances for the club.
“Normally players don’t come back from these kind of injuries but it is down to his commitment, his work ethic, his nutrition, his diet, his training.”
If you have enjoyed reading Non League Yorkshire over the past few months, please consider making a donation to the not-for-profit organisation NLY Community Sport which provides sport for children and adults with disabilities and learning difficulties. CLICK HERE to visit the JustGiving page. There is a video at the bottom of the page showing our work.
NLY Community Sport, run by James Grayson and Connor Rollinson, has always had combatting social isolation at the top of our objectives when running our Disability Football teams.
Our work is playing an important role in reintroducing our players, who have disabilities and learning difficulties, back into society.
We have six teams, a mixture of Junior and Adult teams – Nostell MW DFC, Pontefract Pirates, Selby Disability Football Club and the South Yorkshire Superheroes (Barnsley) – across Yorkshire.
We have enjoyed great success over the past three years. Several of our players have represented Mencap GB in Geneva, including Billy Hobson from Selby and Greg Smith, whose story is quite inspiring.
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Watch the video below to see highlights from our three years as an organisation. The video was produced for our players at the end of March to remind them of good memories from the last three years.