SAINTS midfielder Will Smallbone has opened up on a tough year, which saw him both battling a serious knee injury as well as losing all his hair.

The 21-year-old had just fought his way back into Saints' starting XI, when disaster struck in January 2021.

The young midfielder ruptured his anterior cruciate ligament during a Premier League contest at Leicester City.

Despite initially attempting to play on, Smallbone was forced off just past the hour mark at King Power Stadium and would not return to the pitch for Saints for nine months.

"It's never a good time to rupture your ACL," Smallbone said in an interview with Saints' matchday programme.

"But especially for me, I'd got back in the team after a few quad injuries and then on my first start (in four months), to do my ACL is not ideal. It was very tough.

"Even when the injury happened, I still didn't think it was as bad as it ended up being. I carried on playing.

"To get the scan results the following day, straight away you're thinking that's six to nine months that I can't play football.

"It's such a hard thing to hear. On such a high the day before, to then be told that information was such a low the day after. Everything changes."

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He continued: "After the surgery, for six weeks I couldn't do anything for myself. Luckily my mum came down and lived with me, which she was buzzing about!

"I had her and my girlfriend to help me. They were both great in those tough times."

As Smallbone battled with the reality he would not be playing football again for a significant period of time, another hurdle presented itself.

The Republic of Ireland under-21 international explained: "Alopecia is something I've had to deal with alongside my injury.

"I first had a really small patch of hair missing, no-one would ever really notice. It was the Leicester game, where in a few photos you could see a bigger patch appearing.

"Now it's actually growing back, but to lose it all is very tough.

"Alongside such a big injury, it probably couldn't have happened at a worse time for me personally, to have both of these things going on.

"The doctors can't say if they are linked.

"Because of the injury and the stress of being out for so long, they can't say if that caused it, but the timings line up. It would make sense for them to coincide.

"Mine was a gradual, steady increase of how bad it was. It started off as a really small patch of hair I was missing, which slowly grew and then eventually just started falling out from all sides.

"The doctor's advice was just to shave it because eventually it was going to get to that anyway."

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He continued: "When it first happened, it's a tough thing to deal with.

"But at the end of the day, it's just hair. I suppose I'm in a situation where I'm playing on TV and there's kids watching, who made have to deal with the same thing.

"It's to show that it isn't the end of the world.

"Sometimes, in life, you have to get on with difficult things that are thrown at you.

"The best thing people did was try not to treat me any differently or act like too much had changed. The best thing everyone did was to act normal around me.

"Obviously now everyone can make jokes, because I've come to terms with it. But no-one ever made me feel like it was weird, or something to be ashamed of.

"You just have to embrace it. Obviously in life things are going to happen that you have no control over. In an ideal world, I would not have lost my hair, and no-one would lose their hair to alopecia. But the best thing you can do is take it in your stride.

"I'd be lying if I said I was always positive about my situation. It was such a shock. To go from having a full head of hair to having none in such a short space of time was quite a big thing to deal with.

"There were many down days, especially at the start. It's such a personal thing.

"You speak to people about it, but they don't necessarily understand it because it hasn't happened to them.

"I had such good support around me - my family and at the club - to just get on with it and use it as the next challenge to overcome."

Smallbone, who made his first-team return in the Carabao Cup clash at Chelsea in October, could feature when Saints head to Arsenal in the Premier League on Saturday (3pm), having been an unused substitute for the past four fixtures.