One in the eye put me in top company

Robbie: he’s looked better

The Latics star writes every week for Chron Sport

I SAW on the news this week that Chris Robshaw has been struggling with a black eye of his own.

He feared his gruesome injury would prevent him from putting on the armband for the autumn internationals. His injury was caused by a flying boot — as was mine at Crawley.

So it might just be that I am as tough as the England rugby union captain. That's what I will be telling my teammates, anyway.

At the moment, the eye is not too bad. I am hoping to have the stitches out tonight or tomorrow; my vision has recovered, and the swelling has gone right down.

A good friend of mine, Josh Simpson, was accidentally responsible. He collided with one of his own Crawley players and as his leg flipped into the air his boot connected.

I felt straight away the impact had been a strong one. I was down on the floor for so long because our physio couldn't stop the bleeding at first.

There was no way I wanted to come off, though. I was screaming at him to get me through to half-time, which was only a couple of minutes away.

Once in the dressing room the doctor was able to put the stitches in. I had two separate cuts, with three stitches above the eye and four below.

I came back out with a bandage around my head which kept slipping down,

reducing my vision further. Even when I managed to push it up, it was very difficult to see team-mates to my right — or tackles flying in from the opposition.

One thing I did manage to see was Lee Croft to my right in the build-up to our goal. And he then picked out Jose Baxter, who put us in front.

In the end, it was a good point for us, coming after Jean-Yves Mvoto had been sent off early on.

The pitch cut up quite badly and was really heavy going.

Defensively, we were unbelievable all over the park: when you are a man down, you have to help each other out and that is exactly what we did.

At the back, the organisation of Cliff Byrne was second to none. James Tarkowski was brilliant when he came on as well, while Dean Bouzanis pulled off some great saves.

We were all bitterly disappointed to concede as we did.

And while there was also a sense of pride in getting the point, I haven't been able to stop looking at the table since. With an extra two points we would be right up in 13th, rather than 17th, with a game in hand.



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