Life's a Ball': Ian Liversedge: The Highs and Lows of a Football Physio

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It just goes to show how ruthless and cut-throat the football industry can be behind the scenes, far away from the glitz, glamour and glut. job is frequently as liaison between the doctors who are there for medical illness and the manager who selects and trains the team. was full, full-on. It’s like it is now in the Premier League, it’s a full-on job. Except the difference is, now, there’s three or four of them doing it, I was the only one doing it.”

Joe Royle was set to make a substitution and bring Andy Ritchie on but whilst waiting for the ball to go out of play Neil Pointon popped up to give them the lead in front of 56,000 fans before Graeme Sharp missed a glorious chance go two up. In the end, Mark Hughes wiped it out with a spectacular volley a minute or so from the end of extra time. But as Sir Alex Ferguson once queried, is it merely about flexing your masculinity by using your status to wield power and wring sweeping changes? Liversedge laughs when he says this and while Keegan might be a tad more of a folk hero than the guy with the magic sponge, that’s not to say that the physio doesn’t have a story to tell. We haven’t quite reached the end of the club season and again we see mass culls of staff effecting people’s livelihoods. Every now and again we get the bolt out the blue departures when physios, like managers, are dispensed with. is important to let the manager have the facts as you see them, and not say what he would like to hear, and give your views as advice upon which he may act or not.For veteran physios like Dave Butler, Roy Bailey (twice) and Ian Liversedge (four times) that experience remains raw.

s someone who gives you and your medical team total responsibility, deferring to your scientific judgement and allowing players to return in the safest possible time without risking further injury.” Speaking exclusively to The Football Pink, he said: “My dad was a sports journalist – Stan Liversedge – he was assistant sports editor of The People in Manchester.But whatever the arguments about the number of medical staff, their roles in the hierarchy at a football club and their relationship with the manager, swift treatment on the pitch are vital for the health and safety of the players themselves. In his book ‘I’m Not Really Here, a life of two halves,’ he says: “The relationship between a football manager and his physiotherapist is a bit like a marriage, I suppose.