Interview With Bradford City's Andy Cook On His Return To Football Following Knee Surgery

So following examination and confirming that the knee was unstable, we elected to go ahead with an ACL reconstructive surgery after a short period of intense rehab because the core muscles had lost quite a lot of mass.

We eventually went ahead with the operation as planned on the 21st January 2025. We did a mid third patella tendon graft. There was a small repair need for the lateral meniscus at the same time. Then we started on the rehab route.

So Andy, tell me a little bit about your experiences for the first few weeks after the surgery.

‘It was tough for myself mentally and obviously I couldn't really do much. But I had the exercises to do, just trying to get movement in my knee again. But yeah, obviously that was tough.’

The first three to four weeks are pretty hard going, aren't they? The knee is quite sore and swollen and obviously you are frustrated, you don't see much progression.

‘Yeah. Obviously the pain I was in. So much pain after with my knee. And I couldn't do much beyond the bare minimum. Yeah. But obviously I just kept doing my exercise each day and slowly got better around.’

Joe, how was it guiding Andy through this process?

‘Interesting. Yeah. Very interesting. Yeah. We had a couple of calls on a Sunday, a few times over, whether he’d redone it by sleeping. Yeah. But yeah he's cracked on, yeah.’

These are all very genuine sort of worries though. In the first few weeks after surgery, anyone who has had an operation, they're so worried that the slightest thing might undo everything. Realistically you've gotta have another injury, a significant injury to sort of unpick what's been done but the worry is there cause you are obviously exploring all those possibilities of “well, what if I’ve got a re-injury?”

Andy : ‘I think after, I obviously had two experiences with the first two weeks. I think after that I was able to put that aside, thinking that it's not, it's basically impossible to do.’

Joe : ‘I think it helped that you weren't in a brace. In terms of just feeling as normal as you can be.’

Andy : ‘Absolutely yeah. Encouraged to walk on it. Yeah, of course.’

So when I saw Andy this first post-op, which is about four weeks post-op, I was really pleased with how things were going. The wound was healing nicely and he was obviously a little bit swollen, but he was otherwise fine and putting it through his paces with regards to movement and stuff.

And then of course that first three months is always quite a struggle. But when I saw him after three months, both Andy and Joe were quite pleased with progress at that point. We were looking at trajectories for possible return to play, should everything go well. And I said, we'd have a better idea at the six month mark.

So Andy, tell us about what happened at the six month mark when I saw you there.

‘I think that was when I got the word to start training, just before some training camp like to go ahead. Yeah. Obviously I was running and doing all the line work. For me, it was a massive one mentally.’

The quads were coming back. But still not a hundred percent at that point.

‘Yeah. But it was mentally, it was amazing, do you know what I mean? Because I was obviously picking up what I could do.’

Joe, tell us about the challenges you had?

‘I think it was more just reigning Andy in. He was relatively normal in terms of what we were doing on field and in the gym. Obviously, there's still another stage to go but he’d done everything at that point. You get to that six months and you can shift focus to this game. That game. Training at this point with the lads.’

So I was quite happy about the assessment to say, look, if he feels things are going in the right direction today, to get back to a potential return to play for about nine months. So that was the plan really. 

And then, about 10 days, two weeks ago, Andy was due to see me for the sort of final sign off and I got the message from Joe saying ‘please, can we postpone the appointment? Because there's a plan, there's a plan to bring him on as a substitute for the game?’

And not surprisingly, Andy made a very successful return. 

I think you came on for the last 25 minutes.

And how many goals do you score?

‘Two.’

So that sort of set the tone really and set the expectations of what's hopefully possible moving forwards.

On the most recent checkup with Andy, I was really pleased with his knees; quads are back to full strength. He's got full range of motion and now it's just a case of building on what's already been built on and hopefully progressing to the point of the next sort of four to six weeks where he gets increasing game time with a view to full return for play as and when Joe and the head boss feels you're there.

Moving forward, of course, if there are any sort of minor issues or problems that Andy experiences, he knows that he can come back and speak to me anytime and any sort of small issues, we'll just bounce through from Joe.

So yeah. Anything else to say?

Andy : No, just thank you.

It’s been an absolute pleasure to work with Andy and Joe and I look forward to seeing him take this forward and hopefully return to his regular starting position. Both for the team and also bringing back all of the kudos that everyone and all the fans of course enjoy; we're very pleased to see Andy return.

So just a final thank you to Bradford City, Joe Gannon and of course Andy Cook, it's been a pleasure. Also, a special thank you to Andy Cook for the signed shirt. That’ll be getting framed and hung in the office very shortly.