The PSL’s Footballer of the Season, Thembinkosi Lorch, has broken silence on what he feared most during the 2018/19 season.
Lorch finished the season as one of the top performers for the Buccaneers, and was rewarded with the Footballer of the Season and Players’ Player of the Season awards at the PSL’s end of season awards ceremony, held in Durban last weekend.
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The Ficksburg-born player has revealed that the shoulder injury he sustained on two different occasions made him nervous at some stage during the season.
“You know now that it’s behind me I am able to talk about it more freely but there was a time when I thought I had bad luck or something. How do you explain what happened to me?” Lorch told Pirates’ official website.
Lorch suffered a shoulder injury on 15 April 2017 during a league match against Highlands Park, and a year later on 15 April 2018, the star suffered the same injury against AmaZulu.
Lorch says he was nervous when he was named in the starting line-up against Free State Stars at Orlando Stadium on April 13.
“I’d be lying if I said that the thought didn’t cross my mind in that game against Free State Stars. But do you blame me? How does someone suffer the same injury on the exact same day, one year apart?
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“I played very tentatively in that match and if I recall I was even substituted and after the game came to the end, I was very relieved. I can look back now and laugh at it but it was mentally taxing on me.”