Barrie McKay: Hearts star explains his injury journey

McKay's return to first-team action on the same night, coming off the bench with five minutes of normal time remaining, was his first taste of competitive action since August. It was also his 91st outing in the maroon and white.

Prior to his double injury this summer - an ankle issue saw him miss the start of the campaign before he picked up a knee injury in the Conference League play-off with PAOK - McKay had missed just one match-day squad since joining the club after the start of the 2021/22 campaign. Last season he featured in 49 of the team's 50 matches. So a spell on the sidelines through injury was a relatively new experience.

READ MORE: How a few steps infield could result in a giant leap forward for Barrie McKay

"Since I've come to Hearts I've never been injured," he said. "I've never experienced it before so I have been quite lucky. To get two relatively bad ones straight after each other is probably quite freak. You need to deal with it, it is the risk you take as a footballer that there is always a chance you can get injured.

"The way that I play there is probably a good chance you can get kicked the wrong way and the amount of kicks I've taken already and nothing has come from it. You just need to deal with it and I have got good people around me to help me deal with that."

The assumption was that McKay had done his hamstring when he pulled up against PAOK at Tynecastle Park in August. The player remembers Lawrence Shankland coming across to him to ask if it was the hamstring. Straight away, McKay knew it was his knee. It turned out to be a PCL. A quick Google tells you it is a "partial or complete tearing or stretching of any part of the posterior cruciate ligament". McKay revealed his Google results were far more extreme.

“Unusually when you do it, it’s a contact injury," he said. "I ran in a straight line. The specialist had never seen that before. So it was unpredictable.

“I had never heard of that injury before and probably the worst thing you can do is go home and google it and it tells you your leg is about to get amputated!

“It’s one of those ones you need to deal with. You listen to the physios advice and go from there. You don’t really hear of PCL injuries in football, it’s more ACLs, MCLs."

He added: “I had no idea how long I’d be out. I remember getting the phone call from the physio and my heart just sank a little bit. I had been back a week and played three games. I was fully fit and in squads for a week. That was the hardest thing to deal with.

“You know about hamstrings and take it from there. But because of the unknown I didn’t know if my season was done or I would be back in a certain amount of time."

READ MORE: Barrie McKay Q&A: Difficult injury moments, Hearts role and Aberdeen challenge

McKay had company in the treatment room with good friends Craig Halkett and Boyce part of that journey and was kept sane by the "different exercises".  But he knew the importance of patience as part of the process. 

"You want to get back as fast as you can, no one likes being injured," he said. "Because I had the injury in the summer and coming back from this one as well, I had to make sure it was right. There was no point in cutting corners and maybe coming back a week or two early and breaking down again.

“I’ve been out for as long as they thought I would be. I have done everything by the book. Some people are in a brace for 12 weeks, even longer. You don’t get surgery, it heals with the brace and the position you are in.

“Once I was out of the brace you then build it up again and once you’re out of the brace you try and build it up and make sure everything is strong. I did all the testing to make sure my body could cope with the impact of running. And then you do a couple of weeks of non-contact training and full training and you just kind of keep building it up.

“It has been a long journey, but it hasn’t been the worst.”