Ebbsfleet club captain Dave Winfield has been speaking about the serious knee injury which many felt would keep him out of action for the whole season.

Winfield ruptured his medial cruciate ligament playing against Maidstone on August 8 then and faced a six-week wait to find out whether the knee was starting to heal naturally or if he needed surgery.

The big centre-half discovered his fate in a meeting on Tuesday.

Winfield said: "It’s always in the back of your mind (that it could be the season over).

"Once you wait those six weeks, to come towards that day knowing it could go one way or the other, it really would have been the end of the season or a progression to see the light at the end of the tunnel.

"It could have meant that it would limit my football for the season quite dramatically.

"Myself and everyone involved didn’t know what the result was going to be. The gaffer and a few of the coaches were a little bit apprehensive but it turned out to be a very positive day.

"As a player, you can go off and do what the surgeon recommends and you‘ve got to leave the rest up to your biology and hope it heals the way it should do. That’s not always the case but fortunately for us, it was."

Time was almost up in the derby, with Fleet leading 2-0, when Winfield went down needing treatment.

"It was very innocuous," he said. "I had an aerial challenge and took a little bit of contact from the striker which resulted in me not landing correctly.

"Having said that, the landing didn’t seem to have much impact on the injury, it was when I used my right leg to push away. It got caught in the striker’s legs and as I pulled away, it just went.

"It was very innocuous, not something you could have helped at that time."

From then on Winfield was a spectator, watching his team-mates draw nine of their next 10 games before finally ending the winless streak at Boreham Wood on September 23.

That was followed by a 2-0 victory at home to FC Halifax on Saturday.

Winfield said: "It’s been quite frustrating.

"I’m not the best viewer of football anyway and I do get frustrated when things aren’t quite going the way everybody wants them to go, as the players are as well.

"But the last three weeks have been more enjoyable and easier to watch."

He added: "I am incredibly grateful for how supportive the gaffer and the club as a whole have been since my injury.

"For me personally, it was important to be in and around the the boys - if they needed any advice or guidance, I was there for that.

"We’re a tight-knit unit and it was strange for me to have time away from them.

"I’ll be in every day, as I have been, until I get back on the training pitch with them."

Read more from Dave Winfield in the Gravesend Messenger on Thursday.