Wanderers striker Mark Bridge admits he briefly contemplated retirement after latest injury

WESTERN Sydney Wanderers striker Mark Bridge has fought off thoughts of retirement which crept into his mind as he battled a recurrent tendon injury which is ruining his season.

NEWCASTLE, AUSTRALIA - DECEMBER 22: Mark Bridge of the Wanderers looks dejected after losing to the Jets during the round 12 A-League match between the Newcastle Jets and the Western Sydney Wanderers at McDonald Jones Stadium on December 22, 2017 in Newcastle, Australia. (Photo by Tony Feder/Getty Images)

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MARK Bridge has been stationed some 50m away from the Markus Babbel revolution at the Wanderers, but it might as well be light years away.

Injured on the sixth day of pre-season, the veteran striker has missed all but two weeks since, and is facing weeks more on the sidelines thanks to a recurrent tendon injury the like of which his doctor had never seen before.

Admitting that retirement had crossed his mind, Bridge instead is determined to “salvage” something from the rest of this campaign, already casting ahead to a return in the second half of the season.

Wanderers forward Mark Bridge and Penrith Mayor Ross Fowler at Panthers Stadium. Source: Western Sydney Wanderers

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But he is honest about the difficulty of accepting the evidence that his body is more fragile with age, even while he is desperate to be front and centre of the plans of his club’s new manager.

“Missing training is killing me the most, where I feel I can help - I'm in the gym, I've hardly seen the other boys,” Bridge said.

“I had hardly anything to do with Markus for the whole pre-season pretty much. It's a nightmare.”

New Western Sydney Wanderers coach Markus Babbel has had to do without Bridge for most of the season. Picture: AAP

That nightmare began in the second week of pre-season, as he completed a set of four-minute runs but felt a pop in his calf 15 seconds from the end.

“In my whole career I never had a calf injury, but the scan showed I had a 1cm tear in my soleus tendon,” Bridge said.

“The doctor explained what is was, but he couldn't tell me how long I'd be out because he'd never seen one tear.

“It was frustrating, so we worked off the pain to give us a gauge at first and then built it up slowly over eight or nine weeks.”

At that point Bridge returned to first-team training for a fortnight, until he felt tightness again the same calf. By the end of that session, he was in trouble again.

“It was the same tendon, but higher up and 3cm this time,” he said.

“That was two weeks ago.

Bridge (R) still hopes to be able to play a significant role in the back half of the season. Picture: Richard Dobson

“The doctor had a go at me and he's right - I should not have trained through the pain with the second one.

“He told me I had to come to terms with the fact that I'm not 27 anymore, but 33 - if there's tightness you've got to stop.

“But it's hard to deal with as you get older, you're brain wants to do stuff your body can't. So this one we'll take slower to make sure, in the hope I can salvage something from this year.

“I'm not going to lie, with the second one, retirement did creep in a bit. One ex-player did come up to me and say, why don't you wrap up? You've had a good career. Why put yourself through it, the mental side of it?

“A little bit of me thought I should. But your mindset changes as a parent. I've got two boys and I don't want them to think that when stuff gets hard, you just walk away.”

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