Former Coventry City winger Jodi Jones says his three anterior cruciate ligament operations made him a better person, just as former manager Mark Robins said it would.
Jones was sidelined for a total of 897 days during a spell at the Sky Blues, which meant missing 130 games, between November 2017 and August 2021.
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He went more than five years between starting league matches, from the day he was first hurt playing for the Sky Blues in League Two, to featuring for Notts County in the National League after being sent out on loan by Oxford United in January 2023.
“Being a footballer is the best job in the world as you get up, you go to training and you play football, but you take it for granted at the time,” said Jones on the Sky Blues Fancast.
“When it happened, it was really tough at the time. I remember Mark Robins saying to me ‘it will make you a better person and you will be so strong after this,’ but at the time you don’t really listen.
“Not in a rude way, but because it feels so far away.
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“It definitely made me a better person and a better man away from the football field. It’s like it happened for a reason.
“It gave me a nice amount of time to focus on becoming a good father and I just worked on things I may have taken for granted before.”
And now, after putting his three ACL injuries behind him, Jones is enjoying his time at Notts County and looks forward to playing in League One next season.
“I wouldn’t change it for the world,” added Jones. “Would I have played at a higher level? Potentially. But I wouldn’t have been able to stay at Coventry and create all those amazing memories, or met my partner and have the family I have now.
“Or create the memories that I have at Notts County, which are some of the best of my career.”
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