HE is currently one of Warrington Town’s key players, but it is not long since midfielder Gerard Kinsella thought he would never be able to play football again.

The former Everton trainee missed the majority of last season and the start of this campaign after being struck down by a serious back injury.

Now though, he has fought his way back to fitness and has re-established himself as an important part of manager Paul Carden’s side.

However, Kinsella admits there were times during his recovery when he thought he would be forced to hang up his boots.

“It was very serious and I thought I was done in football,” he told the Guardian.

“The injuries I’ve had have all been big ones. I’ve never had niggles or anything like that.

“All my injuries have ended up with me having to have operations so I think I’ve been a bit unlucky.

“With this back injury I had, I did start thinking to myself that my career could be over.

“I couldn’t even sit down at one point because the pain was that bad.

“At that point, you start thinking ‘how on earth am I going to play football if I can’t even sit down?’ “Luckily enough, I’ve did everything asked of me in my rehab and Cards has been really patient with me.

“He’s played at a high level before so he understood what I was going through.

“It’s brilliant to be back and over the injury. I’m really enjoying my football at the moment.”

The 26-year-old still needs to be wary of his injury and says he can only train certain on pitches.

However, Kinsella has praised Yellows and manager Carden for their understanding during his rehabilitation, saying other clubs may not have been quite as patient.

“The club have been absolutely fantastic with me. They understood how serious it was,” he said.

“It’s not like it was just one part of the body that was affected. The back sort of holds everything else up, so your whole body was on shutdown.

“I was lucky enough that the chairman and the manager were extremely patient with me.

“They knew it couldn’t be rushed when maybe other managers at this level may have pushed me to come back sooner.

“I’ve still got to manage it a little bit, but it’s all good. Sometimes the gaffer will let me do my own thing in training.

“There’s two astroturf pitches at JMO Sports Park in Skelmersdale where we train. One of them isn’t too good so if we’re on that I’ll go and do some work with Jenno (Steve Jennings) and Dan (Gabrielson, physio).

“If it’s on the other pitch, I’ll join in because that’s a bit better.”

Town currently sit second in the Evo-Stik Premier Division table, 10 points behind leaders Altrincham with a game in hand, ahead of Saturday’s hosting of Barwell.

Kinsella was part of the Yellows squad that won promotion from the Evo-Stik First Division North in the 2015-16 season and believes they still have it within them to catch Altrincham.

“We don’t really want to be in the play-offs. We want to be winning the league,” he said.

“I think it’s still possible because of the run-in Altrincham have got. I think they have to play Shaw Lane twice.

“Obviously, we have to hope they slip up but we have to keep doing what we’re doing.”

“We’ll take each game as it comes, but we need wins rather than draws at the moment.”