The last game of the football season can spark off some great discussions. What was your best away day, favourite goal and of course who should be named player of the season? As you think back on the last nine months of games and goals, victories and defeats, spare a thought for one County player who like you has had to watch every game from the stands and would give anything to be part of the action.

Rob Clare's last game for the Hatters was a two nil defeat to Macclesfield on the fourteenth of April last year. Since then he's worked hard in the treatment room with the club's physio Rodger Wylde, but has suffered a season of set backs and disappointments on the road to recovery.

Rob told me it was important to try and stay positive, "it's alright watching the lads but you're still frustrated because you want to be out there. You cheer them on but there's nothing like being out there yourself. It has been disappointing for me but I will get right at some point and hopefully, when I do, I can prove my point."

After playing a major part of County's push for the play off's last season, including every game in the history making nine-game winning run without conceding a goal, the defender was stretchered off away at Torquay. But Rob declared himself fit to help the Hatters keep clean sheets against Lincoln and Chester before a picking up another injury against the Silkmen.

Looking back Rob says he had no idea how long he'd be out of action. "One thing leads to another and you try and play carrying the odd injury here and there and it builds up. I thought everything was alright because I did a lot after the Macclesfield game, I'd got myself back to fitness for the close season came back and after the first week of pre-season my knee started getting sore, and I hadn't really felt my knee before."

It was diagnosed as tendonitis, and what started out as a short lay off from the resulting operation was to turn into a season-long nightmare for Rob as his body seemed to constantly work against him. "You think six weeks later that I should be coming back to fitness, I started running again and picked up a stress fracture in my shin. I don't know how it even came about to be honest."

Despite hard work by the club's backroom staff and Rob himself the stress fracture has so far proved difficult to treat with specialists being brought in to offer their opinion and advice. It's been a difficult time for Rob who has twice had to come to terms with months of progress being wiped out in a painful moment as his shin again lets him down.

"We gave it two months rest hoping it would heal?then we'd start back running and two weeks into the running it starts up again, so it's back to square one and I've done that two or three times."

In an effort to leave no stone unturned County have even tried a technique suggested by the Manchester United medical staff and treated the bone with oxygen to try and make it heal. Rob can't believe it's taking such lengths to get him fit and playing again, "It's been really frustrating for me obviously, and you hope that time's gonna heal it. We've tried all different things but it's not yet resolved?currently I'm going to see another specialist tomorrow and hopefully the problem will get resolved shortly."

County fans will be echoing those sentiments and hoping the twenty-five-year-old defender whose already racked up two hundred appearances for the Hatters will soon be fighting for his first team place back.

But no-one will be keener for his return than Rob himself. "All I wanna do is play football really, every time you get knocked back you think 'are you going to play again', 'when's the next game you're gonna play', 'I've been out for this amount of time' and it all adds up to being frustrating for everyone - the Gaffer included. I just want to get right now and put things right so I can put the injury nightmare that I've had to bed and move on."

Despite his disappointments and frustrations the former England Under-20 skipper has always tried to keep himself positive and enjoy the banter with the rest of the team, although he admits there is a serious reason for trying to stay jolly. "People say you either laugh or you cry so I've been trying to laugh more than I've been crying; that's my way of dealing with it."

After a season long break Rob has one simple wish for next year's campaign, to start playing football again. "I'll be quite looking forward to just training everyday, being a bit more fresh and going in and being a bit more lively with a buzz about coming in, but you know - we'll get there."

Pure FM's Pete Liggins, speaking to Rob Clare.