Derby County wing-back Joe Ward has said he considered retiring from football because of a recurring knee injury – but is now enjoying a run in the team. <\/p>\n
The 30-year-old missed most of last season after requiring knee surgery for the second time in two years.<\/p>\n
But Ward has now started the past five games for the Rams, providing four assists and scoring one goal in the 2-1 win at Swansea on Tuesday night. <\/p>\n
“It’s been so tough,” he told BBC Radio Derby after victory in Wales lifted Derby up to seventh in the Championship and level on points with Bristol City in the play-off places.<\/p>\n
“There have been points where I’ve really been struggling with my knee and at times I’ve thought I could pack this in. <\/p>\n
“But I kept going and doing everything behind the scenes, working hard and being as professional as I can and now it’s starting to pay off and I’m really happy. <\/p>\n
“It’s been a long journey. I’ve worked so hard and I’m still working hard. I’m feeling great. <\/p>\n
“We’re playing great and as long as I can keep helping the team with goals and assists, I’m really happy and hopefully we can push on.”<\/p>\n
Ward said “there is no ceiling” for this Derby side in their quest to win promotion to the Premier League for the first time since 2006-07 after a run of six wins in their past seven games.<\/p>\n
“We’re just going to keep pushing and see where we go,” he added.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Derby County wing-back Joe Ward has said he considered retiring from football because of a recurring knee injury…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":310351,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[563],"tags":[64,63,596,85],"class_list":{"0":"post-310350","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-football","8":"tag-au","9":"tag-australia","10":"tag-football","11":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/310350","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=310350"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/310350\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/310351"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=310350"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=310350"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=310350"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}