FC Halifax Town: Defender Duckworth ready to seize his second chance to finish the season

But the defender has been given a second chance to finish the campaign and help FC Halifax Town into the Football League.

The full-back has had to contend with injury setbacks before since joining Town from Fleetwood in 2017, but says his shoulder injury was the worst yet, undergoing surgery on it around 17 weeks ago.

”It popped out to the back, so I had to wait to get it scanned to see if I’d fractured anything, and then I got it put back in,” he said.

”It required surgery so I had keyhole surgery, they put some anchor things that turn into bones after nine weeks.

”They said the recovery time would be 16 weeks, and this was before we knew we’d be going into lockdown, so luckily for me, I’ll be able to play in the play-offs.

“It was bad, not nice at all, the worst pain I’ve ever felt. It was horrendous.

“The shoulder was awful, but I knew what I’d done straight away.”I couldn’t see any physios in lockdown so I’ve had to do the rehab myself, but it feels good.

“I’m buzzing that I can play and hopefully we can finish the season strongly.”

Duckworth is under no illusions about how much of a test next Friday’s clash at Boreham Wood will be.

“A tough one, very tough,” he said. “We’re all in the same boat though, it’s a level playing field.

“It’s going to be like one of the first games of the season, where you haven’t played football for a while. It’ll be 100mph for the first 20 minutes and then hopefully it’ll settle down.

“Hopefully we can come out on top. If we defend well I feel like we’ll have a good chance because their threat are their front three.

“I feel like we’ve got a great chance. We’re all good, hard-working, honest lads so I feel like with our morale, it just gives us that extra.

“Everyone’s classing us as underdogs as well, which is great for us really. That spurs us on a bit more to go and prove that we’re good enough to play in the next division up.

“I’m looking forward to it.”

The match is the biggest in Duckworth’s three seasons at The Shay, and the defender is confident Town have what it takes to win.

“We’ve struggled in previous campaigns so it’s just nice to be at the right end of the table,” he said.

“We’ll have a right good go. I don’t see why we can’t go all the way.

“On our day we can beat anyone, we’ve proven that during the season.

“At the start of the season I think we were third favourites to go down.

“But we’ve got a good squad. We’ve lost Devante (Rodney), which is massive for us, but we’ve still got enough firepower to go and hurt teams.

“People won’t want to play us because they know what they’re going to get.

“Boreham Wood’s a good test for us but we’re confident we can beat them.”