Jordan Stewart fully focused on football after difficult 18 months at Swindon Town

Swindon Town forward Jordan Stewart has revealed that it was 50-50 whether he could play on following his MCL injury.

Stewart was speaking after Swindon's 1-0 defeat at home to Peterborough on Saturday in what was only his second outing at the County Ground following his move from Glentoran in August of 2015.

By his own admission, his first 18 months in Swindon have not been enjoyable for the 21-year-old who was playing part-time football in Northern Ireland prior to his switch to professional football at Swindon.

When he first arrived, the youngster was suffering from a serious bout of homesickness and then, in September last year, he seriously injured his knee which kept him sidelined for a number of months.

He is now back to full fitness though and the admirably cheery chap is determined to make the rest of his career at the club memorable for the right reasons.

"Obviously it's been well-documented that the first year was very poor for myself and then I just suffered with injuries when I was starting to get a bit of momentum," he said. "Now I'm really settling in.

"Hopefully I've had all the bad times and I can really push on now and have a (really) positive impact.

"It was really only one injury, it was 50-50 whether I could play on and (I hoped) it would go away on its own but the problem worsened and it deteriorated and then I had to have a bit of minor surgery.

"I tore my cartilage and I had a few minor problems but the cartilage just needed to be fixed but now that it's fixed it's as good as new."

Stewart only spoke to the local media for a little over five minutes this weekend but what really came across was the sheer force of will the man barely out of his teens has at such a young age.

"I have just been working really hard to get my fitness back and it seems to be fine, it feels perfect again and hopefully that's it for me.

"I put more pressure on myself more than anyone else because I had a very difficult time and injuries made it even worse.

"I'm not as fit as I'd like to be at the minute but I'm definitely working as hard as I can and hopefully the game time will come as well and I'll be able to prove to everyone that I'm worthy of being here.

"I came from part-time football so it took me a while to get up to speed, I worked very hard in the off-season and unfortunately my hard work was hampered by injury. Now I just need to work really hard to get back to that level.

"I just need to keep showing up every day and work hard and come on for 15, 20 minutes here and there and see if I can make an impact and hopefully I'll get a run out. Everything is going well, I'm just hoping for more minutes."