CITY left-back Adam Drury today spoke for the first time about the injury which looks set to end his season.

But the defender revealed he could have been in a much worse state had it not been for the alertness of Club physio Neal Reynolds.

It's now been almost six weeks since Drury went under the knife to repair serious ligament damage to a knee injury sustained in the 3-1 defeat to Bristol City back on October 20.

The 29-year-old is well on course to making a full recovery, but told CanariesWorld he was indebted to the skills of Reynolds after the physio went against the initial diagnosis of a simple calf strain.

"I tried to get up and play on with it and went up for a header and realised something serious was wrong," said Drury, recalling the moment he suffered the injury. "I had a scan on it afterwards and it showed a bit of a calf strain on it. But, luckily, Neal didn't agree with that and took me to see a specialist, and if it hadn't been for that we probably would have been treating it as a calf strain for a while and done more serious damage, so a big thank-you to Neal for checking it out."

And Reynolds said his initial instinct told him Drury's injury was much worse than it first appeared.

"When I looked on the pitch I said to Adam 'I think you need to come off, I don't think you're going to be able to continue'," said Reynolds. "It was a bit of a mystery injury. We got it scanned a couple of days later and it came back that he had a calf strain. And sometimes in acute situations these things can happen.

"I must admit we looked at it and it completely surprised me and I said to him 'I can't believe that's all you've got' looking at how his knee looked. Everyone goes on about MRI scans, but you can't just go on what a scan tells you - you have to go on what the knee looks like.

"We treated it very gently and hadn't done much with it and about a week later I still wasn't happy with it so we went to speak to a surgeon and from there the rest is history. He agreed with me, we disagreed with the MRI scan and he had surgery that day."

To say that surgery saved Drury's career is probably exaggerating, but getting the correct diagnosis in time has almost certainly prevented the player from spending even longer on the sidelines.

In at Colney for rehabilitation work almost every day, Drury continues to move gingerly under the aid of crutches.

"It's coming along well," Drury added. "Obviously I know it's going to be a long-term thing and when you first hear it it's very disappointing. But the physio team here have worked brilliantly with me and kept me ticking along. They haven't let me get my head down. It's part of the game and you have to get on with it.

"Touch wood, I've been quite lucky with injuries. This is the first thing I've done seriously. But, like I said, it's one of those things and you've got to get on with it. You have your good days and you have your bad days but every day is getting closer to playing again."

Boss Glenn Roeder has admitted he almost certainly expects to be without Drury for the remainder of the campaign. But Drury refused to put a date on his comeback and was simply taking it one day at a time.

"You don't want to set dates or anything like that," he said. "Just every day that goes by is a day closer to being back training and playing. Looking out there at the minute and training looks fun and the lads look like they're enjoying themselves so you just want to be part of that. So I just want to be back as quickly as I can.

"Any injury is disappointing, but when you know it's not just a couple of weeks or a month it's hard to take. But the lads have done brilliantly so far and I hope they keep it going. They've got us out of trouble and hopefully they can keep climbing the table."

Reynolds said he was pleased with the progress Drury had made so far, and was hopeful the player would soon be walking under his own steam again.

"He's coming along on course really," said Reynolds, supported by Peter Shaw and Jo Saunders in the physio department. "We've set goals and set times that we're going to work on. His first goal is six weeks, which comes up this Thursday, from the time of the operation. So from that point of view he's reached every goal that he's needed to. He will then come out of the brace that he's in at the moment, off the crutches, and then he will start to walk around without crutches.