A FORMER professional footballer is claiming £350,000 damages from a club doctor after accusing him of effectively ending his playing career.
Brian Welsh, a Scottish Cup winner with Dundee United in 1994, was with Hibernian when he received an injection for an ankle injury in 1998.
The central defender was close to tears as he told a court how the problem continued to keep him sidelined
, and he eventually had to undergo surgery.
Welsh, 39, said the surgeon had remarked on the site of the injection. "He said, 'You do not inject into the Achilles' tendon. It has finished Tessa Sanderson (former Olympic javelin champion] and it has finished you.' Those were his exact words."
The doctor who gave him the injection, Malcolm Morrison, of Southfield Surgery, Edinburgh, denies negligence and insists that the steroid jab had no bearing on the player's career.
The Court of Session heard that Welsh, now the manager of Cowdenbeath, had joined Dundee United from school and spent 11 years with the club. He said: "I had been on the verge of getting capped at one point… I was on standby for the national team. Hibs paid £200,000 for me in 1996, so I must have been doing something right.
"At the start with Hibs, it was difficult. My son had been born and he was not very well and on a life-support machine. Once it settled down, I was doing well."
In the 1998 pre-season, he had an Achilles injury, could not train and had to rest. "A day or two before the injection, I was jogging and lifting the pace, but feeling a tiny bit of pain. On the day of the injection, I trained in the morning, near enough at full pace. I was feeling good," he said.
He said that he mentioned a slight pain to the club's physiotherapist, Malcolm Colquhoun. "He said we had a doctor at Hibs, an expert in injections. He had written a book, blah, blah, blah.
"The next thing, I had had the injection. I had never met Dr Morrison before. I was face down on the treatment table and Malcolm was talking to the doctor… He said, 'You should be OK in a couple of days.' I felt not too bad until next morning, and I could not put weight on my foot. I phoned the club in a panic. They said it was normal to get pain. I said I had never had pain like this. It was agony."
Welsh said his ankle "just never got better". Each time he tried to increase his training regime, he had a "snapping sensation" in the Achilles area, like someone was shooting him.
Surgery failed to provide an answer, and Welsh said he spoke to the surgeon at about Christmas. "He basically told me my career was finished."
It is alleged in Welsh's damages action that the surgeon discovered "considerable injection trauma to the tendon". Welsh's underlying problem had been a partial tear, his lawyers say, and a steroid injection is used in treating a different problem, inflammatory conditions, and is not given directly into the tendon. They claim that Dr Morrison ought to have referred the player to a consultant for further investigation.
Dr Morrison said in defences to the claim that Welsh had long-standing symptoms of pain in his left ankle and had been frustrated that physiotherapy was not working. The injection was given in accordance with standard practice and not directly into the tendon.
He says Welsh would have needed surgery even if the doctor had not provided any treatment for his pain, and his failure to recover fully from surgery was unrelated to the jab.
The judge, Lord Matthews, will give his ruling later.
The full article contains 640 words and appears in The Scotsman newspaper.
