Swindon Town

YASER Kasim says that it feels good to be back on the pitch after being side-lined with an injury for the past two months.

Speaking to the media ahead of Saturday’s visit of Chesterfield, the midfielder explained that his time away from action had also given him the opportunity to return to his homeland.

“It’s been a long two and half months but I had twenty minutes last Saturday and a full game on Tuesday,” he said. “It felt good to be back on the pitch. I’m enjoying it and just looking forward to the next few games before the end of the season.”

“The most important thing is not doing the thing you love, that’s the toughest part. I think mentally, if you’ve got good people around you and you keep yourself doing the right things - also it’s given me a bit of time where I could have a bit of a holiday so I went back home. It’s the first time that I’d gone back and did the stuff that I really care about back in Iraq. That adds more to your life. It’s basically making the best out of a bad situation at the base of it and enriching your life off the pitch.”

The midfielder added that watching on from the stands during his rehabilitation had been a learning curve for him. 

“I was in the stands for quite a few of the games,” he said. “You take in a lot more - you’re not in a pressurised position of being on the pitch so I made the best of a bad situation being injured. Because you’re off the pitch you see things you wouldn’t necessarily see on the pitch and you take that with you onto the pitch.”