Brad Halliday is stepping up his recovery from a season-long knee injury with a trip to Dubai.
The defender damaged his cruciate ligaments just four games into his Fleetwood Town career earlier this season, an injury which will rule him out for the rest of the campaign.
And as part of the treatment he’s travelled to Dubai for some warm weather training while linking up with the Cod Army’s new UAE side Fleetwood United to watch them train and play.
The full-back explained: “I’ve come over to Dubai to do some rehabilitation, there’s a physio out here who I’ve worked with in the past and it’s nice to get away from the usual setting to help speed up the process.
“It’s going really well, the medical staff at Fleetwood are fantastic and working really hard with me, I’m managing to tick boxes everyday which is great.”
Halliday was stretchered off in the defeat against Sheffield Wednesday at Hillsborough back in August. And the 26-year-old admitted it’s been a tough period of his career.
He explained: “From a personal view it’s been hugely frustrating. Signing for a new team in the summer and then four games in to get seriously injured was very tough, but that’s part of the game, it’s part of football. I’m just trying to get back stronger than ever and hopefully I can do that.
“It’s been a really challenging spell and you do get really challenging days with an injury so serious.
“But when you get news so early after the injury that you are going to be out of the season I suppose it helps to get your head around it quickly. It allows you to break the recovery down into little stages and tick them off one-by-one.”
While over in Dubai Halliday was able to visit the training ground of Town’s new sister club Dubai United, and attended their first ever game on Thursday evening as they beat fellow UAE Division Three side D-Garden 1-0 in a pre-season friendly.
And Halliday says the link-up is something everyone can benefit from.
“Out here the facilities are great,” he said. “We’ve spoken as players about the link-up in Dubai and how good everything is out here and what the club want to do in terms of building a club out here - it’s great.
“I managed to get to the game on Thursday night and I found it really interesting to see the level and what Fleetwood are building.
“We are looking forward as players to maybe coming here on pre-season one day and playing against Fleetwood United one day!"