Club physiotherapist Danny O’Connor has revealed positive news on Joel Dixon’s long-term injury, which has saw the goalkeeper sidelined for over four months.

The shot-stopper made an encouraging start to the season, keeping four clean sheets in the opening six games.

However, midway through that sixth game against Braintree, Dixon went down and was substituted after receiving lengthy treatment.

Since then, it’s been a long road to recovery for Pools’ number one.

“Joel suffered a partial tear in his ACL towards the back end of August,” stated club physio Danny O’Connor.

“It was during the first half of the Braintree game. He made a save through a crowd of bodies and as he tried to get back up, his knee just went from under him.

“Joel never goes down so we knew it would be something serious. When I assessed him on the pitch, there was a lot of instability and he would’ve struggled to walk so we took him straight off.

“Over the following days, there was a lot of swelling and some pain as we were testing his ACL, so we got him scanned and that revealed the tear.

“We went to see a specialist and he advised that we could rehab it conservatively – it wasn’t significant enough to need surgery.

“One thing we had to consider was Joel’s previous history. He’s already had a full ACL rebuild, so to have another on the same knee would be something we wanted to stay away from.”

The following weeks allowed Dixon to recover, before he set his sights on making a return in between the sticks.

“Joel’s been an absolute pleasure to work with,” O’Connor added.

“We’ve used an accelerated plan for what we used with Dan Dodds’ ACL injury last year and it’s worked really well.

“We hit a barrier around a month ago which slowed things down slightly but we’ve managed to move past that now and we’re making good progress again.

“Joel’s attitude has been excellent. He’s worked extremely hard and done everything we’ve asked of him.

“We took him to Teesside University for some testing too. He participated in the baseline testing when the lads returned for pre-season and we still have the data from last season to compare with.

“Everything is where we want him to be – the results are positive and his ACL is looking stronger.”

O’Connor has now revealed the upcoming schedule as Dixon nears a return to full fitness.

“With goalkeepers, you have to think outside the box a little bit,” he said.

“For outfield players, it’s going through the motions of running and kicking. Goalkeepers have a lot more work in terms of diving and jumping, so it’s made gym sessions a lot more interesting.

“He started with some plyometric work last month and has now returned to full running.

“We’re looking to get back on the handling side of things next week with the other goalkeepers, and we’re going to change up his gym session so there’s a lot more explosive movements.

“We’re never going to put an exact timeline on these sort of injuries, especially when he’s been out for so long. We’re hopeful he’ll be available sometime in February as we’re taking things carefully.

“He had a strong start to the season and full credit to Joel, he’s shown fantastic attitude to get back to that.”