Raith Rovers handled my injury badly, says striker James Keatings

dailyrecord.co.uk:

James Keatings says Raith Rovers would have got a better player if they had put him through a proper fitness programme, but his Stark's Park career was over soon after his arrival.And the former Hamilton Accies striker says the Kirkcaldy club didn't do their homework on a hip injury that has been troubling him for years.Keatings, from Wishaw, has left the Championship club and is focusing on his career as a plasterer before deciding his next move in football.Keatings, 30, who has won the Scottish Championship twice with both Hearts and Hibs, and the Scottish Cup with the Easter Road side, joined Raith at the start of the 2021-22 season after impressing at Inverness, but says they refused to put him on a training programme that he had been on at previous clubs.A surgeon had told Keatings he couldn't take part in every pre-season training session, but Rovers decided otherwise.A loan spell at Montrose was terminated in March, with the player himself admitting he couldn't get fit.

He told Football Scotland : "At Inverness for two years, and at Hamilton, I only trained three times a week after having the operation on my hip. "It was the surgeon's programme.

I needed to be managed going forward. Dundee United managed me to get me fully fit, I went to Hamilton and was managed fine and was playing, went to Inverness, and proved there that training three times a week worked."Raith were desperate to sign me.

I went there and they had no clue. They hadn't dug into anything to do with previous injuries."I went in for pre-season, and after the first couple of days I had to get treatment on my hip every day, no matter what."The physio had a word with the manager, saying 'we need to watch what we're doing workload wise, he's different