Gillingham midfielder Ethan Coleman has described how tough it’s been to get back to full fitness after missing pre-season.

The 24-year-old returned to league action last Saturday for the first time since a seemingly innocuous injury kept him out for much longer than expected.

Coleman suffered bone bruising to his ankle at the end of last season, and it was an issue that he couldn’t shake off in the summer.

He played against Peterborough in the EFL Trophy and Doncaster last weekend - lasting an hour in each - putting those injury issues firmly behind him.

Coleman said: “It’s been tough. I don't get injured a lot and when this came about at the end of last year, I thought it was an issue that would be okay to handle myself. It wasn't.

“I came back into pre-season and gave me a bit more ag than I wanted it to, which was disappointing, but now I've kicked on and got it sorted.

“I've missed four or five games now but I'm back in and pleased.

“I'm back to where I want to be. Match fitness is always going to come by playing games and that's the key thing for me now, to get minutes as quickly as possible, and to get as fit as I want to be as quickly as possible.

“You always want to come in pre-season, hit the ground running and be as sharp as possible but I wasn't able to do that this year due to my injury. It was a bit of a disappointing start for me personally but I think I've dealt with it well and I'm moving on now.”

Coleman was left playing catch-up in the summer, working overtime with Bradley Dack in an effort to get back quickly.

He said: “It's tougher to go back into games like that but I think the work that I've done with the sports scientist Jammer (James Russell) on the side has been very helpful and we've done a lot of running, so I've thrown up a lot of times!

“We crammed it in. I was working with Dacky at the time and we were doing a lot of running. We'd do training and then we'd do running alongside that, whereas the team would stop at that point because they had already done their pre-season before.

“It was tough but it was good and I still need to get to where I want to be.

“I've had the issue since I was a kid that when I'm not fit I'll throw up, when I'm training and stuff, but now I've got to the point where I'm not going to throw up!”

The bone bruising in his ankle stemmed from a training ground knock a month before the end of the previous season.

He said: “It was a bit of an annoying one. I've never experienced it before and it just wasn't going at all. I'd be off it for two or three weeks and wouldn't do anything on it.

“I'd go out for just an upper-body gym session and it would blow up.

“It was frustrating but I think we've managed it well and now I'm there.

“With bone bruising it's different to muscular bruising. I think it takes a long while for it to recover and it did.

“I continued to play through it (last season) and then at the end of the year I thought two weeks to give it a bit of rest and then I'd be back running again - but it wasn't like that unfortunately.”

Coleman said he was “really excited” to be back out there playing against Doncaster last Saturday.

“I was just buzzing for the whole thing really,” he said.

“It was a disappointing result. Probably a disappointing performance but it was good to be back out there with the boys.”

The game at Doncaster came days after his new deal at the club was announced - penning a contract which runs to the summer of 2027.

It was a deal that manager Mark Bonner was keen to get done - making it a priority when he first too charge.

Coleman - who joined in January 2023 - said: “I think when a manager's got confidence in you like that - and he hadn't even seen me play physically at that point but he'd watch my clips and stuff like that. I think it's important for me as a player to gain that confidence from the manager and go from there.

“I'm really pleased (with the contract). Delighted. The project here is a really, really good one.

“Since I first came in, it's completely changed what our aims and what our achievements we've set out to be. I’m really looking forward to it.”