Raith Rovers: Recovering skipper Ross Matthews admits his freak toe injury sounds laughable but it's been hell to deal with

But the long serving Stark’s Park ace ultimately did significantly more grimacing than grinning during this latest campaign dealing with the aftershock of a condition which has needed a second operation since it first reared its ugly head late in a 2020-21 term which saw Rovers make the Scottish Premiership play-offs before ultimately losing the final 3-1 on aggregate against Dundee.

“The injury sounds pretty stupid when you tell people,” midfielder Matthews, 27, told the Fife Free Press. "I would probably have laughed at someone to be honest if they’d told me that their big toe joint was sore before this injury.

"But you don’t realise how much you actually need it.

"It’s better now but at the time when it was at its worst, any time I tried to turn or sprint I was in agony pretty much. Thankfully I’ve got to the bottom of it and I’m not getting any pain from it at all at the moment.

"I still don’t actually know what I did to it to begin with. It went back to a night game a couple of years ago, at the end of the Covid season.

"It was a strange one because I felt I was fine during the game and I played the full game. Even when I came home, I went straight to my bed but when I woke up in the morning I couldn’t walk, my foot was massive, swollen, red hot to touch and I couldn’t put any weight on it.

“It stayed like that for a bit but I was desperate to get back for the Dunfermline game in the play-off semi-finals (which Raith won 2-0 on aggregate). So at the time I had a steroid injection just to kind of numb it.

"I played through it which, looking back now, is a big regret of mine. It never really healed properly after that.

“This season has been a nightmare for me, the worst season personally that I’ve been involved in after playing through the injury the season before.

"So I was told I was getting an operation at the start of this season and I would be back within two to three months.

"Kind of a year later I’m only just getting back now (after a second operation) so it’s been difficult to deal with.”​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​