Ebbsfleet goalkeeper Chris Haigh is ready and waiting after his quickfire recovery from a double leg break.

When Haigh suffered the injury at Eastbourne in August, some Fleet fans feared they wouldn’t see him in action this side of Christmas.

But it’s been a remarkable and swift road to full fitness, a testament to Haigh’s positive mindset and meticulous work ethic.

“I’ve been fully training for about three weeks,” said Haigh. “There’s nothing that I’m not doing.

"In terms of the fitness levels, they are there. Now it’s about being able to get to the best that I’ve been and back at the levels.

“When I first spoke to the surgeon, I was told it would be six weeks in a boot and six weeks after that before you can get to any form of training again, so 12 weeks, basically.

“The gaffer was told about Christmas time before I am back but I thought I’m going to get back before that, there’s no way I’m going to be out for 12 weeks.

“After my surgery I spoke with a couple of specialists who have seen a lot of these injuries before, one of them a few of the boys know quite well and he said we’d get you back training in eight to 10 weeks.

“I knew I’d do everything I could to get back as quickly as I could. I had the boot off after two weeks and was walking around. That was the main factor, to be fair.

"If you have the boot on for six weeks you lose a lot of muscle, whereas because I was walking around in my trainers and lost the crutches quite early, it meant that I was still using those muscles.

“My first goalie session back was after just under eight weeks. I still get a bit of soreness here and there, but I’m now pretty much fully fit and good to go.”

Haigh revealed that his desire to carry on playing after a heavy challenge in his first start of the season at Eastbourne also made his injury worse.

Unknown to him, Haigh had already broken his tibia but then broke his fibula as he bravely tried to play on.

Reflecting on that evening, the 25-year-old said: “The gaffer said to me before the game, any balls in behind I want you there so in my head as soon as the ball came over I knew I was going to come and deal with it.

“I got there and kicked the ball, it hit the striker and went for a throw-in, then on the follow-through he just caught me with his studs on my shin.

“Obviously, I was stupid enough to try and be a soldier and try to play on. I actually broke my tibia in the challenge and then I broke my fibula when I stood up and tried to play on.

“Basically, your tibia takes 80% of your weight and your fibula takes 20, so you’re not meant to take all your weight through your fibula.

"I tried to play on, I was walking backwards towards my goal and then I felt my fibula break and fell to the ground like a sack of spuds.

“After the first challenge, because it was just an impact, I didn’t even know I’d broken it. I said to Katie [Knowles] the physio ‘give me two Solpadeines and I’ll play on’ so I did that and got up and broke the fibula. I didn’t know I’d broken it and I find it hard to mentally accept that I’m injured so I just wanted to play on.”

I actually broke my tibia in the challenge and then I broke my fibula when I stood up and tried to play on.

That’s a dramatic enough story, but it was just the start for Haigh.

The next 24 hours saw a visit to hospital for an X-ray, sleeping on a sofa at Stonebridge Road with team-mate Greg Cundle and then an operation on his broken leg.

“It was a whirlwind 24 hours,” he recalled in a massive understatement. “After the incident we had no idea what I’d done. My ankle was all in the same place, it wasn’t twisted around or anything so it wasn’t obvious that I’d broken it.

“Me and Greg Cundle have been best mates since I was 16 so Greg took me down to Maidstone Hospital. I had an X-ray and at about 5am I got the results of the X-ray and the lady said ‘you’re not going to be playing football for a very long time’.

“She said I’d broken my tib and fib and I was taken aback by it. They put it in a cast and said I’d get a phone call from the consultant and there’s a good chance I’d need an operation.

“It must have been five minutes getting out of the hospital, me and Greg were driving to get a McDonald’s breakfast, and I got the phone call. They were pretty confident I was going to need an operation and said if I did then they’d do it that day.

“At this point me and Greg hadn’t slept so we actually went back to Ebbsfleet’s ground about 6.30am and as I didn’t know what was going to happen, we went and slept in the lounge on the sofas for an hour.

“Then I got a call saying I needed the op and they’d had a cancellation so I was going in that day. I spoke to a couple of other specialists and they all said go for it.

“We had another sleep on the couch for an hour, with cleaners coming in and out wondering what was going on! Then Katie took me down to the hospital, I went in at 1pm and had my surgery.

“I never really got a minute to process what was going on, to be fair. After I came out of surgery it started to sink in.”