Ex-Leeds United and Sunderland defender makes big admission after injury frustration

Niall Huggins feels he can recapture the form of his early days on Wearside after taking a major step forward in his injury comeback.

Huggins scored a brilliant individual goal against Watford on Wednesday night, the crucial moment in the game as he opened the scoring and sent Sunderland on their way to a 2-0 win.

Watford's visit was Huggins' fifth consecutive start, representing a major step forward after two injury-hit seasons since joining from Leeds United.

The 22-year-old's performances had been steadily improving and speaking to the club programme before the Watford game, he said he felt his fitness was back to the level it had been before his injury nightmare began.

That has allowed him to recapture the form that helped him break through at Leeds United and earn the move to Sunderland.

“I totally understand that I have got to prove myself”, Huggins told Red & White.

“The first two games I started, for me it was getting past the injuries and getting the body working which was the main thing. It took me a long time to get over that. Once I did, it’s more of the ability side of things.

“The first two games, I was trying to get my confidence in. At Championship level, sometimes you can find yourself finding it hard to focus if you are not up to that fitness level. In the recent Cardiff game, that was probably the fittest I’ve felt, and I felt like how I was when I first joined.

“Now I just have to keep proving myself, stay in that team and get a good run of games under my belt which I’ve needed for a while.”

Huggins made just four appearances last season, two of those in the play-off campaign as he began to finally come through the other side of his injury issues.

That allowed him to play a full part in pre season from day one, helping him to build the robustness from which he is now starting to benefit.

Huggins says the hardest part of his near two-years on the sidelines was not being able to get to the bottom of the issue, but is confident he is now moving past that frustration.

“I don’t think many people understand the actual extent of the weirdness of the injuries and how uncommon they were," Huggins said.

“I was travelling to London once a month to see a specialist and we never got an exact answer as to why this was happening.

"I spoke to a genetic specialist, I did probably every test you could ever think of which were body related, bone related. Everything came back how it should be which was a fit and healthy 21-year-old. There was never any outstanding thing which was the answer. That was probably the hardest thing to get over.

“You want to be available, but I just never got an answer as to why this was happening. That was the hardest thing to get my head around. Every time I did break down, it was just another case of ‘why is this happening?’

“It took a whole season and a bit to push past it. It’s not happened since which is good news.”