Hamstrings can be a nightmare if you don't allow them to heal properly. I remember when Owen kept having trouble with his, the physio worked with him all summer to get him right, even went on holiday with him. Then when preseason training started the physio said Owen still wasn't ready to train with the other players. Houllier said he needed Owen to train with the other players "to give them a boost". The physio and Houllier fell out and the physio was sacked. Owen broke down again and finished up having to have an operation to "shorten something" (I forget what
)and was never quite the same again.
If there was a defining moment in his career, then it was a snapped hamstring when his then-manager Gerard Houllier ignored the advice of his physio and insisted Owen be brought back from injury quickly because he needed his goal threat so desperately.
The French coach fell out so badly with the physio, Mark Leather, he forced him out, but Houllier later admitted to the mistake, which Owen believes led to the moment that changed his career - on a cold March evening at Elland Road, Leeds, in 1999.
“My hamstring snapped in two and it was at that point that my ability to perform unimpeded was finished,” he says now ruefully.
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