Kyle Joseph has revealed how he spent the second half of the 2024/25 Championship season playing with an ankle injury, which needed surgery to resolve earlier this summer.
Joseph, who bagged his first Tigers goal in the win over Istanbulspor on Tuesday, joined from Blackpool in January with City paying £2.5m to bring him to the MKM Stadium from Bloomfield Road.
The striker endured a difficult period after arriving from the Seasiders with City battling against relegation. The team only avoided the drop to League One on the final day with a draw at Portsmouth.
Joseph, along with Mason Burstow, will be charged with leading the line going into the new Championship season, at least until the club can bring in reinforcements. He says now he’s back fully fit and raring to go having been boosted by scoring the first goal in the 2-1 against Istanbulspor last Tuesday.
“I’ve had an ankle problem for about the past 18 months, two years. It was when I was on loan at Oxford, which, when it occurred and then it went away, it felt OK. Then, towards November time, when I was at Blackpool, I badly, I badly hurt it and then since then it was never the same,” the frontman told Hull Live.
“Coming here in January, I had the medical; we picked it up in the medical, and it was something which we needed to get sorted in the summer.
“Since January onwards, it was just painful to play on, but at the end of the day, there was a cause there to play and I wanted to try and help as much as I could. It was something which affected me more mentally than physically, but it got to the point where the pain was just natural to me.
“I went down to London, got the surgery done, and the surgeon said to me, ‘I don’t know how you’ve played on that for the last eight months’ because of how bad it was.
“It was meant to be a half-hour surgery, but it turned into an hour and a half surgery. Now, after coming out of it, it feels so much better. I feel a lot more confident in my body, a lot more confident mentally, and I feel like I can have a really, really good push to have a good season.”
You can watch a video interview with Kyle Joseph right here
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