Harrogate Town's George Thomson feared he would never play football again during 16-month injury nightmare

The influential 33-year-old midfielder made his first appearance for struggling Harrogate Town since August 2024 when he arrived from the substitutes’ bench in the second-half of New Year’s Day’s 2-0 home defeat to Tranmere.

Having damaged his achilles during the Sulphurites’ 2024/25 season-opener against Bromley, the former Nottingham Forest trainee has had to endure a troublesome and complicated rehabilitation process.

Thomson has been under the surgeon’s knife on three separate occasions and suffered a number of setbacks on what has been a seriously long road to recovery.

After missing almost the entirety of last term, he resumed full training in pre-season and appeared to be on course to make his return at the start of the current campaign.

But, having made some encouraging progress, Thomson broke down again, required another operation, and has spent the last five months working his way back to full fitness.

And he admits that there were occasions during his 509-day absence when he was convinced that his professional career was over and done with.

"There have been some dark days and there have been times when I thought that I would never step foot on a pitch again,” Thomson told BBC Radio York.

"I’ve got a 14-month-old boy who I thought would never see me play football. They are the sort of things that you think about when you’re in the position that I have been in.

"There have been times when it has been really, really tough. I’ve had days where I’ve had scans and been told ‘there is nothing there’ when I have been in agony.

“I was searching and searching for an answer and hopefully I have finally got one with this last operation and I can get back to what I love doing.”

Thomson went on to explain how being faced with the task of restarting his rehabilitation from scratch after a failed operation – not once, but twice – that he found the most difficult part of his ordeal.

"I’ve never really had a serious injury before,” he added. “This has been my first one and it’s happened to be this wild journey that I have been on.

"After the operations, you get yourself to a position where you think that you are going to be back, and then you get pushed all the way back to the start.

"I’ve done that three times, and I think that has been the most challenging thing. I’ve been three months, four months into my rehab and you find that you’re no better off and have to go back to the drawing board and start again.

"Hopefully, I can look back on it and think ‘you’ve done yourself proud’ in terms of coming through the other side of it.”

The long-serving Thomson has been a key player for Town during his eight-year stint at Wetherby Road and weighed in with 26 goal contributions (18 goals, eight assists) during his last full season - the 2023/24 campaign.

Thus, his return comes at a pretty handy time for Simon Weaver, with his team currently rooted to the foot of the League Two table and on a horrific run of 14 league matches without a victory.