The captain of the Black Cats club may soon be making his first-team comeback following his two Under-21 appearances.
Corry Evans, the captain of the Newcastle United football club, stated that “any minutes I play between now and the end of the season will be a bonus” despite his goal of rejoining the first team.
The 33-year-old Northern Irishman required surgery to repair cruciate ligament damage after suffering a serious knee injury against Middlesbrough in January 2023. Evans has been training for the past three weeks after overcoming the mental and physical strain of the past year. In his comeback game, the U21s defeated Newcastle United 3-2, and Evans scored.
After that, he made another appearance for the youthful Black Cats in a 4-2 victory over Leicester City, where he was praised for being a step above the others. He thinks he will be ready to return to the first team after playing a few more games.
“I feel good and I had some minutes in the reserves so it’s nice to get out on the pitch and kick the ball about again,” he told the club.
“It’s been really difficult [in the past year]. It’s more mentally than anything. Being away from football for that long you are just sort of concentrating on getting fit and to the level you can. There’s a lot of long hours in the gym and coming in throughout the summer when all the lads are off. Personally it’s been tough but at the same time it’s been good as well, to work on other things, being in the gym and working on strength and so on. And the challenge of trying to build your knee and your leg back up to the level that’s required. So it’s been a good challenge as well.”
Evans stated, “I’ve managed to start my coaching badges last summer and I will be doing the next part of that this summer,” demonstrating how well he has utilized his time off the field. That aspect of the game has been something I’ve been concentrating on so I can prepare myself for retirement.
“It’s been great to have a bit more time with the family as well. I’ve got a young family with three kids. You know with football you are always travelling near enough most of the week and you are away for internationals too so that’s been nice and it’s been nice for them to have me about.”
“So it was good to get that little bit of experience and hopefully I can carry on that progression of playing in the first team now after a couple more games in the reserves.
“My aim is to get back to a level I’m happy with in terms of fitness where I feel good with my knee. It feels good now and hopefully I can maintain that towards the end of the season and keep building match fitness and try and come back and get some minutes in the first team towards the end of the season. “There’s not very many games now but any games I can play between now and the end of the season will be a bonus for myself.
“I think it’s important for me to come back. We’ve not been on the best of runs lately. So it will be nice to come back and try and help the lads to finish the season on a high. Going into next season it’s important that in the summer we go off on a positive note and look forward to next season.”