Investigation: Players cast adrift as reality of SPFL injury laid bare

Founder of Back Onside, Libby Emerson, estimates that the charity has stepped in to help around 500 players with their mental health since it was set up in 2017, but the charity is also increasingly stepping in to fund recovery from serious physical injuries too, given the knock-on effect those injuries can have on a player’s mental wellbeing.

During a Herald Sport investigation into the issue, we have heard from players who have been forced to sell football cards or start online fundraising pages to pay for scans, operations and physiotherapy, with little to no help available for players whose main livelihoods are often jeopardised by injuries picked up while playing professional football in the SPFL.

The players

Kerr Fraser upon signing for Gretna FC (Image: Gretna FC)

Kerr Fraser is a 24-year-old semi-professional player for Gretna FC 2008 in the SPFL Lowland League.

During a match against Cowdenbeath in early September, he suffered serious injuries to his leg, rupturing his ACL, sustaining two tears to his meniscus and a fracture to his shin bone.

He now faces a race against time to fund an operation scheduled for December 21st. If he fails to find around £6000 towards his £8500 target between now and then, the procedure will be cancelled.

In the months since his injury, Fraser has had little support or guidance from his club. He even attempted an ill-fated return to training, before he finally paid for his own MRI and discovered the true extent of his injuries.

The isolating effects of his injury and concerns over his livelihood as a civil engineer have, he admits, had a hugely detrimental effect on his mental health.

“I got a burning sensation from the top of my leg right to my toes,” Fraser said. “I couldn’t bend it, I couldn’t straighten it.

“I went to the hospital and they said that it was too swollen, so they couldn’t take an X-Ray. So, I just went home, and then I tried to go back to training after about six weeks.

“I actually tried to do the bleep test, and it was still giving me pain. I think I’ve maybe done some more damage by doing that.

“That’s when I went for my MRI scan, which I had to pay for, and found out what I had actually done.

“I’m on light duties just now at work, my manager has done his ACL before and is in a moonboot just now, so he knows how I’m feeling.

“Financially, it would have been hard for me to go off until my operation when it was so far down the line. I can’t thank my work enough, but I’m isolated compared to when I’m usually working.

“Normally, I would be working alongside everybody else and having a laugh, so that’s had an effect on me, as well as not being able to play football, go to the gym, play golf, all the things that I would usually do to get me out the house.

“I just feel isolated in all aspects. It has definitely taken a toll on me. I just feel a bit s**t about it all to be honest, I haven’t felt great at all.

“The club didn’t do much. They basically set up a GoFundMe page and that’s it. The manager [Michael McIndoe] has been great though, and if it wasn’t for him, I don’t think I would have raised the money that I have so far.”

Despite the strides that have been made in removing stigma around mental health in Scottish football over recent years, Fraser admits he would still be trying to deal with his injury alone had it not been for the intervention of Back Onside.

“They’ve been a big help,” he said.

“I don’t think I would have spoken to anybody if it wasn’t for one of my teammates helping me, because he knew about Back Onside. I didn’t even message them, they messaged me.

“I didn’t really have the confidence to speak to my family or anybody else about it. I can’t thank them enough. Nobody else has reached out to help me. Only them.

“I’ve been in the hydro pool, I’ve been on a call every week with one of their counsellors, and that’s really helped me because I’m not one for talking to people about this sort of stuff.”

Even after dealing with the harsh reality of being left out in the cold as a player with a serious injury, Fraser’s mind is now focused on doing everything he can to get back playing.

He feels though that clubs should be doing more to help their players when they are going through such a traumatic and lonely experience.

“I can’t give up football,” he said.

“But I think clubs have taken advantage of the fact that players at this level are doing it because they love the game.

“I don’t think clubs prepare enough for players getting injured. I’ve seen it a lot, and I don’t think it’s right at all. You can’t just leave people to fend for themselves when they have serious injuries. How can we afford it?

“Especially if players are working and the football is only part-time, it’s so difficult.

“There is no support given for your mental health either.”

Gary Fraser is another player who has benefitted from the help of Back Onside after his own injury problems.

He has suffered serious injuries as a full-time player at Partick Thistle and while part-time at Peterhead, and only got his latest operation after a year out of the game thanks to a £2500 donation from West Ham chairman David Gold.

He feels that the PFA also have to step up and do more for players in such situations, alongside their clubs.

“Clubs are just interested in keeping money, and they try to keep every penny that they can,” Fraser said.

“I’ve been very lucky. At Partick Thistle, they paid for everything at the time, then at Peterhead they at least done something about it and got in tow with Back Onside.

“There are other clubs out there that just wipe their hands with you. They just say they won’t pay for your treatment and that’s it. You’re left in limbo.

“If it wasn’t for Back Onside doing that for me then I would have had very little help.

“If you have a full-time job then you would have to be considering whether the risk is worth it or not.

“Nobody comes chapping your door with money, do they?”

Fraser, now at Open Goal Broomhill, was almost lost to the game for good, and wonders how many players do decide to hang up their boots given the lack of support that is available to them.

“The injury affected my life in both aspects, I couldn’t play and I also couldn’t go to my work, so it wasn’t great,” he said.

“I eventually got the operation a year later, but by the time it came I was considering not even getting it.

“I’m glad I did, because now I’m now at Broomhill and it’s the best thing I ever did. I’m enjoying my football again. I’ve got a new lease of life and I would miss the football something terrible.

“But I was very close to not getting that operation.”

The charity plugging the gap

Libby Emmerson with Barry Ferguson (Image: SNS)

Libby Emmerson, founder of Back Onside, explains how her charity has been stepping into a void that no one within the game seems able to fill, and how the lack of support for players who do suffer serious injuries is causing many of them major issues with their mental health.

“If you knew the extent of this, it’s frightening,” Emmerson said.

“Players now come to us, and the clubs do too, because they need help. They have seen in the past that we’ve helped players, and that isn’t just with their mental health, but with their physical needs as well, because that in turn affects their mental health.

“When players get injured in League One or League Two, there does seem to be an attitude of ‘well, deal with it yourself’. We’ve seen a lot of that.

“Mentally, these injuries can have such an impact on them, so we’re trying to do everything we can to help them along by getting them operations and helping them with their rehab.

“We have a partnership with Oriam in Edinburgh which enables us to bring the players we are supporting in to have sessions in the hydro pool, which helps them mentally as this allows them to continue making progress, but also allows them to keep their strength and fitness up whilst dealing with an injury or whilst waiting on an operation.

“It lets them start rehab earlier than they could do under normal circumstances on the pitch. They work with our sports scientist, physio and counsellor so they are getting the best treatment both physically and mentally.”

The difficulty in gaining access to the right treatment is a major issue for the players, but so too is simply attaining an accurate diagnosis in a timely fashion.

“What is very frustrating to me is even things like MRI scans,” Emmerson added.

“We have organised them because the wait affects players so badly. They are waiting three or four weeks and they have no idea what the injury might be or how long they will be out for.

“If that is at a full-time club and a player had that same injury, they would have the scan the next day, but many smaller clubs hang about and get their physio maybe to try to treat them.

“What we have seen happening a lot of times in the past is players getting diagnosed wrongly or getting the wrong treatment from part-time physios. Before you know it, you are five or six weeks down the line, their mental health has completely deteriorated.

“They are coming to us at the point when they don't know where else to turn and we know that they need to get that scan. A lot of the time, there will be issues, and then it’s ‘where do we go from here?’ “There are a lot of clubs who are great, like Peterhead and East Fife, who try to help their players as much as they can. But in many cases, clubs don’t have the money to pay for the scans, so they often don’t have the money to pay for treatment.

“Is it the club’s responsibility? Probably, I would say yes, there should be a responsibility to budget for injuries, because they are only going to have one or maybe two players a season who would have something major.

“You are an employee, you have signed a contract to come and do work for their club, and if you get injured then it is the club’s responsibility to look after you. Mentally, physically, financially. It should not just be down to the players to go and deal with it.”

Emmerson would like to work with the likes of the SPFL, the SFA and PFA Scotland on the issue, but says she has found little evidence of an appetite to engage with the charity.

“It’s a hard one,” she said.

“I don’t want to seem to be having a go, but we shouldn’t have to be alerting them to this problem. They should be able to see and hear about the work that we do, it is widely known in the game.

“We could easily work together on this, but there seems to be an ‘us and them’ mentality, and an attitude that things like Back Onside aren’t needed from the governing body side. “All we want is the best for the players both mentally and physically, so it seems silly we are not all working together to make this possible for them.

“The thing we get thanked for the most is just making them feel as if somebody actually gives cares about them.

“It shouldn't matter what money you earn or have in your bank, as unfortunately injuries can happen to anyone at any time and the impact this has on your mental health does not change depending on the money you earn or have.”

Emmerson believes it is long past time that this issue was brought to light.

“It’s time something was done about the lack of support offered,” she said. “I don’t think people realise how bad this is and how people’s lives and livelihoods are being affected.

“All players, no matter what level you play at, should have a trust and know if they get injured they have something behind them that's going to help them out, especially the players who pay a monthly fee [to the PFA]. “I think the SFA and the SPFL also have a responsibility and a duty of care to have something in place. And what is the PFA for if they can’t be there for players in these scenarios?

“There should be a fund there like the PFA in England have. If a player gets injured in England, there is money there to cover it. You can apply for funding, so why do we not have that here?”

The Agent, and a possible solution

Allan Preston (Image: SNS)

Football agent Allan Preston, who himself had to retire from his playing career through injury, is sympathetic of the financial challenges many clubs face. But he suggests that television revenues could be harnessed to provide PFA Scotland with a similar emergency fund model that is in operation through the PFA in England.

“There is a duty of care for these clubs to look after the players medically as best they can, but it doesn’t always work out that way,” Preston said.

“Especially when they are coming to the end of their contracts, they won’t look after them. They should do, they honestly should do, because if they come to the club fully fit then they should leave the club fully fit.

“Full-time clubs look after their players, but part-time clubs simply can’t afford to. I’ve seen players fundraising online for operations. It’s not right.

“The lower leagues here should get a percentage of the TV money to help them, as they do in England.

“When I was playing, I remember Alan Shearer and all these guys threatening to go on strike to make sure that money went into the pot to help these players in the lower leagues. They didn’t need it, the Shearers and the likes, but they were looking out for players in the lower leagues.

“That’s something they should be looking at up here. Can they get a small percentage of that diverted to help the players down the chain? Because without them, our game dies a death.

“But the clubs won’t want that, because it’s money that is coming out of their pockets. It’s horrific, it’s really poor.

“But the guys at the top need these clubs to produce players, to send boys out on loan to, and I think that people will turn their backs on our game if we don’t deal with this.

“The game is getting quicker, injuries are getting more common and things like cruciate injuries are happening all the time.”

The PFA

In England, the PFA offers six players each week access to residential rehabilitation at St George’s Park, designed to ‘help players overcome injury and safely return to playing as soon as possible.’ During this period, players receive intensive rehabilitation in the state-of-the-art facility, as well as education about how to manage their injury once they leave. If the player requires further care for a long-term injury, they can apply for financial help through the PFA Accident Fund.

Former players too can also be issued grants if they require ‘medical assistance outside NHS parameters. This includes support for consultations, scans, operations and physiotherapy for injuries or illness suffered as a consequence of your football career.’ This is funded through a percentage of TV revenues allocated to the PFA by the Premier League, a figure understood to have been around £24.94million this season. PFA Scotland do not receive an allocation of broadcast revenues as it stands, and do not offer such services to members.

In partnership with Special Risks Ltd, the PFA also offer every player in England and Wales accident and injury coverage, as well as insurance for career ending injuries.

In recent weeks, PFA Scotland have emailed members to offer access to a similar insurance scheme, but Herald Sport understands many players feel the extra monthly cost on top of their union dues will prove prohibitive.

Fraser Wishart, PFA Scotland chief executive, was contacted for comment, but didn’t respond before going to print. Herald Sport understands though there is a frustration within the PFA at what they see as an unwillingness from the game’s governing bodies to work with them on this issue, with communication between the organisations having deteriorated since the Covid pandemic.

The SPFL

The prospect of SPFL clubs voting to apportion a percentage of television revenue to pay for operations is, according to multiple sources, a ‘non-starter’. With every penny a prisoner already, clubs are believed to be reluctant to divert even a small percentage of their income to a fund for injured players.

The SPFL, for their part, have previously brokered an insurance package for players for career-ending injuries, but explained why they feel their hands are tied when it comes to offering further assistance.

A spokesperson for the SPFL said: “As employers, many of our clubs have insurance policies in place to cover player injuries.

“However, the expense of such policies may make them prohibitive to some clubs in the lower leagues.

“Several years ago, we brokered a deal on behalf of all 42 clubs which provides support on the rare occasions that players incur a career-ending injury.

“However, given the volume of registered players in the SPFL, which this season is in excess of 1,000, as well as the enormous variations in player wages across all four leagues, it isn’t feasible for the SPFL to provide insurance which would cover less serious injuries.”

If you wish to help Kerr Fraser get the operation he needs, you can donate by clicking here.

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