QPR's Grant Hall on 18-month injury torment: 'I'm not ashamed to say I needed help, I had dark days'

For a member of a team on the worst losing run in the Championship, Grant Hall is surprisingly upbeat. Queens Park Rangers have lost their past five league matches, two in the past week. They have not won in the Championship since Boxing Day, when they were in eighth position and vying for the play-off spots. Now, not even two months later, they lie 18th.

Hall, 27, is picking out only positives though. Last month, he finally returned from injury. Debilitating knee tendonitis that kept him out for nearly 18 months had left him fearing for his career.

“I’d read about Owen Hargreaves, who had it in his knee, too, and had to retire early because he had operations and it didn’t work. So, I was sceptical and I thought if it didn’t work, my career will be over.”

After beginning at Brighton, spending a short spell at Tottenham – in which he was mostly on loan trying to make his mark at League One and Championship sides – his move to QPR in 2015 had felt like his big break. The centre-back had been at Loftus Road for two successful seasons, playing consistent first-team football and even won the club’s player-of-the-year award, before the injury lay-off began. He speaks candidly about the period of depression it sparked.

“I’d had two good seasons and the next season was where I wanted to push on and see where that took me. The injury was a difficult time for me, I suffered with it massively. I didn’t know how to deal with the situation, I wasn’t in control.

“I was watching the boys train, play and there were times where I couldn’t be around football because it was killing me not being able to play. Fans kept asking me, ‘when are you back?’ and it killed me that I couldn’t give them an answer. I had dark days. The thoughts I was having were I might have to retire, where do I go from here? I didn’t have a plan B.”

It was Les Ferdinand, QPR’s director of football, who said the Professional Footballers’ Association would give him the help he needed.

“I needed to speak to someone, I’d bottled everything up for months,” he says. “I knew the support was there but I didn’t know where to look for it. I didn’t want to speak to my family, because none of them have ever been involved in football, so they don’t know the pressures, and I didn’t want to speak to anyone within the club because I see them every day.

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“I needed help and I’m not ashamed to say that. It’s massive in football now, mental health. And they’re doing a lot more for players and I think they should continue to do so because it does help. I spoke to someone for about two hours and some of it wasn’t about football, just about life in general, and it opened my eyes to say that it is OK to speak to people and they will understand – you’re not alone.

“I’m glad I did it, it felt like a weight off my shoulders.”

It is an experience that has given him a sense of perspective. Instead of looking at QPR as being in a moment of crisis, he is instead focusing on the possibilities. His return to the field has coincided with the club’s first FA Cup run to the fifth round since 1997. A home draw against Premier League overachievers Watford is exactly what QPR needed, Hall says.

“It’s been 22 years, I think it gets rid of that unwanted record. The main thing is for the fans, getting to the fifth round of the FA Cup is a game that they can enjoy, Watford at home, a Premier League team.

“Especially with where our league form has been, that’s a big result to win in the FA Cup. It gives us another big game, and another chance to progress and gets us away from the league action.

“It’s the quarter-finals next if we win, that’s a hell of a statement if we get through, especially because of the previous years where we’ve not done well at all.”

He speaks like a man without the usual pressures of professional footballers, almost like someone working on borrowed time. He jokes about the other operation he undertook during his time off injured – a hair transplant – and says that despite stick from his team-mates he may have started a trend in the QPR dressing room. A weight no doubt has been lifted from the 27-year-old, his confidence restored, and not even being on a losing side can ruin it.

“I’ve taken positives, I started the last three games in a week, the last time I did that must have been nearly two years ago now, that is massive. A couple of the results haven’t been great but that will change, I’m confident of that.”