Woolston: This was the time to give something back

Woolston hopes he will soon be able to return to action with United’s Under-23s but is being helped by the other members of the goalkeepers’ union as he counts down the days to coming back to the Aon Training Complex.

“As footballers, we want to play football,” he stressed. “All we want is to play and not being able to do that for so long is frustrating.

“Everyone has been brilliant – David, Sergio and Granty, all the way down to the younger keepers. We’re keeping in touch and trying to listen to what we have to say and seeing how your day is going. It’s a union and a tight-knit group so we stick together. We see each other every day for longer than the others and Lee has been brilliant for me because he went through the same injury, with a shoulder operation, so I’ve been speaking to him about what I should and shouldn’t be doing. His experience has been a great help.

“The Under-23s group have a catch-up every other week and it’s just a bit of craic that cheers everybody up. We had a great season and deserve to be promoted. Even if we’re not, it can’t take away the achievements but hopefully we’ll be back and maybe celebrating going up. If not, we’ll see what happens – it was brilliant last year but it’s time to kick on and see what we can achieve next season.

“Kieran [O’Hara] and Alex [Fojticek] are moving on to different clubs but they will always be a part of us and we’ll always be there to support them. That’s the type of people we are as goalkeepers – I know Kieran and Alex will go out and have great careers and show how good they are.”

To find out how Manchester United Foundation is helping the local community, head to mufoundation.org.