‘I felt drained and knew I couldn’t do it. It was horrible’

When a footballer is feeling poorly he tends to be sick as a parrot.

Not any more, perhaps. Because it seems there’s an even worse condition for a footballer to be in — he could be as sick as a McShane.

The last time we saw Paul McShane, it was just a brief glimpse of the Hull defender warming-up on the Craven Cottage pitch before a vomiting bug forced him out of last month’s friendly against Oman.

“Ah, I was in a bad way,” he recalled with a grimace.

“There was a bug going around at the time, five or six of the lads got it, but they got it early doors, after getting back from Kazakhstan.

“Kevin Doyle got it, he was getting sick a couple of days before me and I was slagging him over it, saying to get a bit of Calpol down him.”

Indeed, McShane will gleefully later add the detail that Doyle couldn’t even make it in time to a toilet at the team’s London hotel, throwing up in an umbrella stand instead. But soon enough the smile – and a whole lot more – was being wiped off McShane’s face.

“I woke up the morning of the game, had breakfast and felt a little bit ill but thought I’d have a little sleep in the afternoon and feel better,” he said.

“But I felt worse and then I was just trying to get going during the warm-up and I couldn’t. I had an injection from the doctor in my bum which made me worse if anything. I just did some runs and the small-sided possession game and it was just like, ‘I can’t’.

“I felt drained and knew I couldn’t do it. I just needed to get out of there and back to the hotel. And, I got sick everywhere in the hotel. It was horrible.”

Everywhere in the hotel? Er, like in reception? “[Laughs] No, no, I got to the room. But it was one of those sicknesses where you’re like [makes retching sound] for about five minutes. It was horrible. I got sick about six times and then I felt good pretty much straight away. But it was too late then!”

McShane, who has reclaimed his place in the Hull team under new boss Steve Bruce, says it was “a bit of a kick in the privates” to have missed an opportunity to play for his country against Oman — especially since he also sat out the Euros in the summer — but, while all the signs are that he’ll have to resign himself to a watching brief once again tomorrow night, he has no intention of following in Darron Gibson’s footsteps by withdrawing his international services.

“No, no, I wouldn’t [do that],” he said.

“I’ll always make myself available. I don’t really know what’s going on with Darron because I haven’t really spoken to him. But I’d never ever walk away.”