Tears, a phone call and help getting dressed: The true battle behind Di'Shon Bernard's Sheffield Wednesday return
Di’Shon Bernard stepped back on a football field earlier this week having feared the moment may not come. Our man Alex Miller spoke to him on an emotional evening at Salford City.
From time to time, Di’Shon Bernard would shed tears. From time to time he would find himself sat on the edge of his bed in silence, waiting for his partner to arrive and help him put on his boxers. For some time he wondered if he’d ever step foot on a football pitch again.
It’s no secret by now that the journey from that cold, February 2025 injury at West Brom to the warmth of Salford City on Tuesday evening was one long, arduous and painful - both physically and mentally. Some 19 months passed between appearances in the Wednesday first team and vital, painful surgeries have been had. In many ways it’s a road that has run parallel to that of Sheffield Wednesday.
Beyond the headlines updating supporters of Bernard’s progress and of his setbacks and beyond the frustrated social media reception that they would so often receive was a young man fearful of the phone calls that would come first; from surgeons or medical professionals advising as to the direction in which his rehabilitation was going.
Like air, a healthy body is for many something you only truly appreciate when you don’t have it. But for a professional athlete newly settled into a long-term contract, with fan adulation rising at a club then seen to be mounting a challenge for a position in the world’s grandest league, the cutting off of oxygen was desperate, not least after a mid-recovery setback served to near-double his return period.
“I got to a point where I started running on the machines and then felt fine,” the Jamaica international told The Star from the Salford pitchside, an hour or so on from his EFL Trophy return. “And then literally just out of nowhere, the pain came and then I had a scan. I got the phone call saying, ‘Yeah, you're going to have another surgery.’
“From then I thought, damn, two surgeries. I was going to go down that rabbit hole. I just remember getting that phone call that day and I just self-destructed. I didn’t know what I was going to do. But everyone around me told me to stick at it and told me it was going to be all right. And now I'm here. It's crazy, 19 months. But I’m happy to be hopefully finally be back.
“That phone call was just so tough. I remember having the scan and then the doctor calling me and you're praying it's not going to be bad. Another nine months. Then you think to yourself, ‘Why is this happening to me?’ The club was going through what it was going through and I knew it was something really testing me. I knew if I got through it, then I should be alright, but it was so tough.
“I have a lot of people to thank but it was tough. I was coming in when everyone's off, I was in the gym and the gym wasn't the greatest. The physios still stopped by and told me to come in and to keep at it, telling me I’ll be alright. They've been brilliant with me. The days I'd come in and my head wasn’t in the right place, they take their time with me. They've been tremendous with me. I'm so thankful and I’m so pleased.”
The Star’s last chance chat had with Bernard was in baking Austrian heat in the hour or so before his teammates took on Stoke City to round-off their pre-season training camp, a trip that had seen him and a handful of other injured Wednesday players set off to the side in lighter exercises while the fiercer work continued in the middle-distance. Bumping into him outside the changing room of the plush ÖFB Campus, the 25-year-old was about to undertake an intense running drill in what was brutal midday sun, long before the Owls would take the field for the warm-up for their friendly run-out.
He’s a character you can’t help but root for and looking out at his solo running exercise from the stands that day, it struck that injury is a lonely place for a footballer to reconcile. A couple of months on, Bernard’s smile was an infectious one that dazzled beneath the Salford floodlights. The conversation was earnest and full of emotion as he revealed the depths to which he sunk and rose, from the consideration of an enforced retirement in his mid-20s to the determination to recover.
Alongside Wednesday’s medical staff, his agent, his family and his partner provided vital support as did his teammates, many of whom made the trip to Salford and earlier to the under-21s match in which he made his initial comeback last weekend. Players were photographed watching from Hillsborough’s South Stand and had travelled on their days off to be there, some bringing along their children.
“I got messages from a few people initially,” he said. “I had friends who've had different ACL injuries, they messaged me and told me to stick at it. I’d get the messages from my family. I was in a brace for six months, you can't shower, you can barely go to the toilet, you can't cook and feed yourself, you can't do simple things like put on your boxers. It's crazy to even look back on where I was and where I am now, but without that support system around me, it would have been tougher.”
Though the destination is in sight, Bernard’s mission is not yet complete. Run-outs in the under-21s and at Salford are monstrous landmarks but there remains a way to go to get back to full match sharpness and towards full, 90-minute contention in League One football. Once that status is reached, Wednesday may have the feeling that they have signed a new player.
Though he clearly recognised there is still work to be done, he spoke with a sense of joy, thankfulness and relief. That his first team return came at the AIG Stadium was an act of irony not lost on the Wandsworth lad, who made his senior league debut there as a Salford player cutting his teeth on loan from Manchester United. During the evening some Ammies staff members are seen greeting the defender and wishing him their best.
“Honestly, the lungs were getting through it, but it was good to be back in the show, playing with the boys again,” he said when asked how he felt his return performance went. “I would see the lads training all the time, but it's so good to be playing with them and now I’m trying to get back to my best, getting to play in front of the fans. And honestly, playing back out at Salford, it feels weird.
“I played in the Covid season, so there wasn't many fans here to watch, but it's good to be back somewhere familiar that I know. It was a full circle moment and it’s like I've restarted again, you know what I mean? It was surreal. It's weird the way the world works.”
Di’Shon Bernard has come a long way from lonely Austrian runs and silent moments sat on the end of his bed. Cut down as his reputation began to grow all those months ago, he returns to a very different Sheffield Wednesday, both club and player revitalised and on a parallel mission to recover from fear of terminal decline. They restart together. The world works in weird ways indeed.