FC Halifax Town: “You’ve got to look after the players’ well-being” - Aaron Scholes on life as Town’s physio

If you think the physio at a football club just looks after the bucket and sponge on a Saturday, think again.
Aaron Scholes. Photo: Darren Murphy/Matchday ShotsAaron Scholes. Photo: Darren Murphy/Matchday Shots
Aaron Scholes. Photo: Darren Murphy/Matchday Shots

Aaron Scholes shared the job with fellow physio Nick Taylor last season, but is now doing the role full-time as the club’s head of sports science and medicine.

Scholes has primarily worked in rugby league up until now. He has worked with the first-teams at Bradford City and Huddersfield Town, but has been with the Bradford Bulls for the past eight seasons and has previously worked with the Scottish international rugby league team and the England community lions rugby league team.

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The 30-year-old, from Bradford, says an injury he suffered himself triggered his interest in making a career in the profession.

“When I left school I joined the army and got injured quite early on, injured my back, got a lot of treatment, scans, specialist opinions, but no-one knew what was going on,” he said.

“Unfortunately I had to leave the army but that sparked an interest in treating injuries, and I tried to stick around playing sports as much as possible.

“Through uni, and through contacts at certain clubs, I managed to get in and try to help people out while I was learning.”

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Scholes is enjoying working with Town boss Pete Wild and assistant Chris Millington.

“It’s been great. Chris and Pete are unbelievable, they trust you to do your own job.

“They know I’m an expert on the medical side of things so if I go to them with a suggestion, they’ll say ‘OK, let’s run with that’ rather than maybe second guessing it.

“They trust you to get on with it and we work really well as a team.

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“We can change things round at a whim based on feedback from the lads and play around with drills quite quickly.”

Scholes says the role of a physio can sometimes feel like being an agony aunt, providing a crucial buffer between players and management.

“You’ve got to look after the players’ well-being,” he said.
“You get the players on your side, you know when someone’s struggling or not.

“You need to be open and honest with them. They need to feel that they can come and talk to you, otherwise I’d struggle massively.

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“You find you get the players on your side if you’re honest with them.

“This is a good bunch, they talk to me quite often. My phone’s on 24/7 for them to get in touch.

“It’s a big part of the role that you don’t really get taught in university.

“We have our own private messaging group, they have a daily monitoring questionnaire in the morning where they can feel free to talk to me.

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“I get round the lads as much as possible, the lads who were here last year know me quite well now, they’re good at talking to me.

“It’s just about being around them as much as possible. If you’re hidden away in your room, they’d probably stay away from you, but if you get in and amongst them you can see how they are, talk to them about daily life rather than just football, and they tend to open up a bit more.”

Scholes said the Town squad came back for pre-season in good shape.

“I think Pete has looked into it himself a lot, really done his homework himself before bringing people in,” he said.

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“You see it in certain sports that a lot of broken players get signed, basically, because of their name, when they might be more injured than anyone else.

“But Pete’s really done his homework. I was surprised when these guys came in this year how good a condition they’re in.

“Some do have an injury history, but they are in good shape, and I’ve not had to do as much as I thought I was going to do.

“We do a lot of medical forms with them, especially the new guys, talking about their past injuries, any conditions I might need to be aware of so I can fully prepare myself.

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“We like to talk about their past injuries because we can plan training around them.

“A lot of people think the players all have the same sessions, same gym sessions, same running sessions, but we like to base things around their old injuries, so if someone’s had a really bad injury previously, we’ll do prehab or exercises before we start anything, to get on top of that.

“They’ll have a certain set of exercises to prepare that joint or muscle they’ve injured before.”Gym exercises might be different, so I’ll work with Adam (Simpson, strength and conditioning coach), and they might do a different gym exercise that helps them more.

“We prescribe their condition, based on previous injuries, if they’ve had a lot, they might do something different to someone who’s not had any injuries at all.

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“They’ll start off lighter and we’ll build up in pre-season, whereas someone who’s not been injured, we can make it a bit harder from day one.

“If you take Nathan Clarke, he’s played hundreds of games, he’s not necessarily got a detailed injury history, but he’s getting to an age where he’s closer to the back end of his career rather than the beginning.

“So we’re treating him slightly differently. Running-wise we’re going to build him up so he’s ready for the first game of the season.

“We start off lightly. He’s getting on, his joints are older than everyone else’s, whereas the younger guys, like Jay Benn who’s just come up from the youth team, we can make his conditioning harder from day one.

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“He can reach a fitness level a little bit quicker, but with Mr Clarke, we’ve got to get him ready for day one of the season.

“We’ll take our time with him, look after him and get him on the pitch more often than not this year.”

Every single player has an individual fitness programme drawn up for them, which is monitored throughout the season.

“We did a movement screening when they came in on the first day where we checked all the joints, as well as talking about their old injuries,” Scholes said.

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“We’ll keep on that for pre-season, assess them again afterwards to see where they’re at, see if anything’s improved, which hopefully it will have done.

“Once that’s done we’ll reassess where we need to go for throughout the season.”

Pre-season may be a busy time for him, but Scholes hopes his focus on assessing and monitoring the Town squad means fewer players on his treatment table.

“The main aim is not to be doing any rehab, because if we’re not then all the players are on the pitch playing,” he said.

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“My time is primarily spent assessing players, monitoring them.

“We do a quick questionnaire in a morning, and a few little tests, so we can see how tired they are, or if they’re struggling before they actually pick up an injury.

“If we spend more time on that, I tend to spend less time treating injuries.

“That works out great, especially for us because we’ve got a small squad.

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“If I can spend most of my time on that, I’ll be doing alright.”

Scholes says the job has changed a lot over the last few years.

“I started off doing hundreds of little tests, trying to be on top of players constantly, collecting data for data’s sake really.

“We’d collect a lot of information on the players to try and get a broader idea of how they were.

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“Over the last 10 years I’ve probably whittled all those tests and procedures down to just a few key ones, especially in football.

“I don’t want to be doing hundreds of tests when I can just have the information by just doing a couple.”

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