Zach Hemming, an unlucky injury and how his kids helped his journey to fitness with Chesterfield

Goalkeeper Zach Hemming has revealed how the badgering of his kids helped him along the long road back to fitness from the unluckiest of injuries.

The wrist injury the Chesterfield stopper picked up in pre-season stopped him in his tracks just as he was looking forward to staking a claim to get back in the team.

Coming on the back of ending last season out of the side, it was bad timing and also made him fully appreciate the joy of playing.

He missed it and so did his two kids, and it they who helped nudge him along in the many weeks of rehabilitation and visits to a specialist.

“I’d been out a long time and picking up the injury when I did wasn’t great because I was excited for the season and came back in good shape,” explained Zach.

“It wouldn’t have been too bad if it was anything else. If it had been my left hand at last I would have been able to do stuff but it was on my right hand so I couldn’t really do anything.

“I went in for an operation to get a little screw in it. I was back and forth from Manchester quite a lot seeing a specialist.

“It does make you appreciate playing. I have two kids and they’re asking ‘when are you playing, when you are playing, when are you playing’. Obviously they come along to watch so they were probably pushing us along as much as I was.

“They just wanted to come to the games and see me play.”

Hemming (26) has had an eventful return to the side since re-claiming his place from Ryan Boot nearly a month ago.

A five-goal thumping of Crewe, a humbling at Newport and then back-to-back cup wins - all complete with a grand total of 26 goals - wasn’t the steady re-introduction to action the Bishop Auckland-born player might have been hoping for.

“It’s about finding your feet the first couple of games,” he said.

“It was good to be back against Crewe and get the win. Obviously Newport wasn’t great and then we were back on it against Yeovil in the FA Cup and then came Mansfield (in the EFL Trophy) on Tuesday.

“I probably needed those two cup matches to try and find my feet again as a sort of mini pre-season.

“A lot of people will say that when you come to watch us you could see anything.

“On Tuesday we started not so well, probably a bit sloppy from myself as well.

“When we got a goal back from Joel Randall just before half time we just knew we had enough about us to go and win.

“It was quite a positive talk at half time and then we came out in the second half and played probably the best second half we’ve played.

“We can score a lot of goals. It’s just the way we play. We obviously like to play attacking football and commit bodies forward and hopefully we can do that at the weekend and tighten it up at my end as well and get the clean sheet.”

Next opponents Bristol Rovers are a robust, combative side very much in the image of their experienced manager Steve Evans.

Hemming would love to walk off with his first clean sheet since March and is under illusions what it will take to achieve it.

“Anybody in this league is tough, especially away from home,” he added.

“We know they are going to put it on us and we are going to have to defend our box really well so hopefully the lads can stick together and deal with those long balls and get a good result.”