Midfielder Callum Camps spoke to the media ahead of Fleetwood Town’s trip to Lincoln City on Saturday.
Camps, who has just recently returned from a shoulder injury and Covid-19, played his first full 90 minutes in four months against Stoke City on Tuesday.
Here is what Fleetwood Town’s #10 had to say ahead of this weekend’s game:
On how it felt to get a full 90 minutes…
“I felt good in the game the other day, it was the games before that where I played a couple of 45 minutes and a 60-minute game. I’ve done a bit of extra work since those games, and I played in the game the other day and I felt near enough back to normal.
“You can train as much as you want, but unless you are playing the games, you aren’t getting that key fitness in. The only way you’re going to get up to full speed like you are in the season is by playing a lot of games. I could only play half a game, I couldn’t really get through a full game but that’s the only way you can get up to speed really, is playing 90 minutes.
“I was just happy to play the full game, on the ball I was a little bit off it in terms of being sharp and fully up to speed because it’s my first game back. I was more just happy to get the full game in, I was hoping to stay on the pitch, I was hoping to not get brought off because I felt like that’s what I needed in my legs.”
On Saturday’s opposition…
“Yeah definitely [confident], we’ve been speaking as a team, the number of good teams that are in this league, even the ones that have just come up, they’re all big sides so you can’t really expect any easy games anymore in this league.
"I think we’ll always be confident, we went there last season and we played well, and it was one of our best performances, Lincoln away, so hopefully we can go there and do the same again.”
On the trials of pre-season, surgeries, and Covid…
“I’ve played a few behind-closed-doors games with the Under-23s since coming back from having Covid and my shoulder surgery, but it was good to get a full game out the way and feel good about myself on Tuesday – let’s hope for a few more in the coming weeks.
“It took a while to get over the surgery. For the first week, I was just stuck in bed and felt like I’d gone back to how I was at the start of pre-season. I then managed to get back up to fitness, but I fell back to square one when Covid struck.
“I’d seen a lot of people had been getting it and even a lot of the lads from last season who had it and it didn’t really affect them that much and I was always one of them who thought if I did get it, it wouldn’t really do much to me and I’d just have to isolate for 10 days and then I’d be back.
“Since then, I’ve played a couple of games, like I said before, and managed my first 90 minutes in about four months the other day, which felt great.”