Ex-Cobbler Rose says O'Toole is not to blame as he opens up about broken leg

Rose suffered the injury when he contested a drop ball with O’Toole during December Sky Bet League One encounter at Fratton Park that ended in a 3-1 win for the home side.

During the first-half, referee Lee Swabey awarded a drop ball following a head injury to Pompey’s Nathan Thompson and with O’Toole and Rose both going in hard in an attempt to win the ball, it was the latter who came off worse and had to be stretchered from the field after a long stoppage for treatment.

Many home fans inside Fratton Park were far from pleased with both the referee and O’Toole for their part in the incident, but Rose believes no-one was to blame.

Speaking to Neil Allen of Portsmouth’s The News, the 29-year-old said: “It’s no-one’s fault it happened. It certainly will be a lesson for me, but I don’t put any fault on anybody.

“I would say it was a freak. John-Joe took the ball first, I can’t really argue because he won the tackle.

“With the drop ball, the referee clearly wasn’t sure who had the ball when he blew up for a head injury to Nathan Thompson. We were adamant we had the ball and they were adamant they had it, so it was ‘do you know what, let’s just contest it’. We saw it as a mini-duel in the heat of the battle at the time. Sometimes winning those little battles can have a little edge – but it just went wrong.

“He won the ball and the inside of my shin went underneath his foot and it’s pure impact. Normally you see leg fractures when the foot is planted on the ground and all the impact comes in, but this was pure impact, both of us going bang into each other.”

Rose also revealed that O’Toole, who was often his midfield partner during a fifth-month spell at Sixfields in 2016, contacted him the following day.

“John-Joe tried to speak to me at the end of the game, but I had already left at half-time,” added Rose, who looks likely to miss the read of the season after undergoing surgery.

“Northampton’s captain, Marc Richards, who has now gone to Swindon, is a good friend from my time there and he rang me on the Sunday.

“Northampton had trained that morning and he told me John-Joe was not in a great way in his mind knowing what had happened and being unable to speak to me.

“Then John-Joe rang me later that day. He didn’t know what to say, he just wanted to see if I was okay, and I reassured him there were no hard feelings. He easily could have been the one that came off worse.”