(Photo by Pro Sport Images/ Matthew Redman)
by Chris Dunlavy
IT TOOK Scott Hogan little more than 14 months to complete his rise from Non-League to the Championship. Another 595 days passed before he scored his first goal as a dream move swiftly slipped into the stuff of nightmares.
August 30, 2014 was to be just another landmark in a period that had seen Hogan start out at Hyde, return to boyhood club Rochdale in League Two and then make the jump to Brentford in double-quick time.
But a mere 15 minutes into his Championship debut in August 2014, Hogan went down with a sickening twist of the left knee – and the snail-paced road to recovery can only be described with venom by a young man who had the world whipped away from his feet.
“You hate the world. You hate everything,” recalled the 24-year-old. “There's no way of making it sound better, you just hate it all, you're stuck in the confines of your home.
“It's not a pleasant thing, some people might enjoy being at home all the time, but not being able to go out at all is so hard.
“Initially I couldn't sleep for two weeks, I needed strong painkillers, but the pain is expected from a surgery, in the muscles around your body even just after a walk.”
Hogan could not be blamed for thinking someone, somewhere, had it in for him. If all had gone to plan he'd have been fighting fit for the start of this season.
Instead, all his hard work unravelled after damaging the freshly-repaired anterior cruciate ligament in training this time last year.
“I'd be lying if I said I wasn't depressed the second time it happened,” Hogan admitted. “It felt like the end of the world and that I didn't want to play football.
“I got a nice move to the Championship at 22, thinking I would be 23 when I would get back, then that turned into 24 and suddenly I've lost 18 months to two years of my career.
“There are more dark days than positive days. Positive days may happen once every two weeks when you hit a target and make progress, but then you watch the lads go out on Saturday and you just wish you were out there.”
For nearly two years there had been one particular target he had been desperate to hit, however, and it was mission accomplished a week ago when he headed home an injury-time equaliser against Bristol City – a month after his return to first-team action.
Initially, it had looked as though he was to be the butt of another cruel joke after he saw a penalty saved.
He followed up his last-gasp leveller against the Robins with a late match-winning double in a 2-1 victory over Cardiff in midweek. Perhaps – at long last – he's caught a break.
“I'm not a penalty taker, I never have been,” added Hogan. “I felt I should take it, it was my decision, and I couldn't have hit it better, it just happened that the keeper saved it.
“I'm not a sentimental person; I know when there's a job to do, but I think that penalty miss was one of those, a one-off, and I was laughing in my head when that happened.
“Nothing ever comes easy and it was a gentle reminder not to take my foot off the gas.
“My head didn't go and I was always confident of getting a chance. It was a roller-coaster ten minutes, and that pretty much sums up my time here.”
It was a moment to share with his supporting cast and particularly girlfriend Charlotte, who he admits in her own way has suffered just as much.
“I took a lot out on the people who were there and around me,” he said. “My girlfriend bore a lot of it, and that leads to problems in itself, and you do fall out with people, but she and the staff here are understanding.
“They understand they're the ones in your immediate vicinity, and while I took it out wrongly on them, they understood.”
As for that troublesome knee, Hogan insists it has been given a clean bill of health – and if anything, the countless days of drudgery he put into his rehabilitation have made him a quicker, stronger and fitter player. That's a tantalising prospect for a mid-table Bees side desperate to replace the goals up top of a certain Andre Gray.
“I've got targets in my head about appearances and goals,” added Hogan. “But the most important thing is that by the time August comes around I'm ready to play 46 games and score 20 or 30 goals. Five goals this season is a personal thing for me, knowing that I'm back and can score goals at this level and a reminder of the fans for what they can expect.
“I don't analyse my performances – if I over-complicate things then that defeats me, it gives me too much to think about and my performances drag down with it.
“I want to prove people wrong, showing that just because you've got a knee injury doesn't mean you can't keep playing at the highest level. I look after myself, so I reckon I've still got 12 years left. People asked me if I considered my career, but that never once crossed my mind.”
