Calem Nieuwenhof reveals initial Hearts injury diagnosis and how hamstring issue turned into 11-month problem

Calem Nieuwenhof has revealed how his initial injury diagnosis at Hearts has turned into almost a year out of action.

The Australian midfielder has not kicked a ball in anger this campaign but did make the bench during a 6-0 rout of Dundee, a welcome boost for the player and head coach Neil Critchley. Nieuwenhof joined Hearts from Western Sydney Wanderers in the summer of 2023 but has been restricted to 29 appearances, in many of which he impressed.

His last competitive appearance was on March 3rd 2024 in a win over Celtic, a day shy of 11 months out of matchday squads by the time Dundee on the road rolled around, still to make a competitive appearance since. After three setbacks in his recovery that had a framework of up to three months, the midfielder is keen to make up for lost time.

He said: “It's been a long time, honestly. It's been tough because, obviously, as a footballer, I want to play football. I love the game, I love competing and, yeah, to go such a long time without that, it's been a tough, yeah, almost year now. But, I mean, the support from my teammates and the staff here has been incredible.

“I couldn't thank them enough. Initially it was a hamstring injury and then, obviously, hamstrings can just be really tough. And I ended up having a couple of reoccurrences and it just was really niggly because it involved the tendon.

“From there it sort of got longer and longer. And, obviously, it was really frustrating for me to be just having such small setbacks. But, yeah, just for it to sort of escalate into such a long time. Now I've been feeling good and just so happy to be back on the pitch again and hopefully, being able to play again very soon.

“If I had to point to a particular point, I'd probably say one of the sort of times where I had a recurrence of my injury. Because you go through the whole rehab process and you feel like you're getting close to being back playing. And then you might just feel something small.

“And then that can be another substantial amount of time out. So probably one of the moments that was probably the toughest was finding out when I'd re-niggled my hamstring because that was so frustrating. Because I felt like I was really getting close to being back involved and then to be set back out.

“Like I said before, the support from both the staff here and the players, yeah, couldn't have been any better. So I'm thankful for that. I'd say three, yeah, about three setbacks. And obviously with hamstrings, it's just so tough because sort of the recurrence rate is really high. And all it takes is, you know, one small thing to go astray and that can be a significant amount of time set back.

“Your sort of general framework for like hamstring injuries is sort of like eight to 12 weeks if it involves a tendon. So that was kind of where my head was at. But then, yeah, tendons are just really tough because they go really easily. So then after I had the first sort of recurrence was when I got sent for surgery.

“We had the meeting with the surgeon and he basically said to us, you can go sort of try to do it like without the surgery, but there'd be a really high chance of recurring it. So at that moment, we sort of decided it was just best to go for the surgery and give us the best chance of getting back.”

Nieuwenhof knows it might be a game of patience to get back into the Hearts midfield, which includes fellow Australian Cammy Devlin. He added: “I want to get back to it as soon as I can. I feel like I’m in a good spot at the moment and I’m ready to come back in and compete.

“I know it’s going to be a tough job to get back into the team with the form we’re in at the moment. The midfield has been excellent recently, Cammy and Beni (Baningime). So it’s a really hard squad to break into. But they’re all really good issues for our team and I think we all drive each other really well in training.

“We all just want each other to do as well as we can so we all push each other. And that’s a really good environment to be in.”