 Well, hello and welcome to the official AFC Bournemouth podcast coming to you as ever from Vitality Stadium, the home of the Cherries. Now our job here is to bring you closer to some of the personalities connected to the club throughout the course of the season and beyond. It might be first team players, it might be staff, it might be key academy personnel, you name it, we have you covered. Now for those of you who are new to our podcast, my name is Zoe Rundle and I'm part of the media team here at AFC Bournemouth. Now today I'm privileged to be in the company of BBC Radio Solent Commentator Chris Temple, who recently surpassed his 20th anniversary covering the club. Chris, it's great to see you. How much are you looking forward to being back on the official AFC Bournemouth podcast? Zoe, lovely to see you too. Back reuniting our preview show partnership from yes to year, still fondly remembered and I've got to say deputising for Neil Perret is one of the most sought after jobs in the world of broadcasting. So it is lovely to be here today. It's brilliant to have you alongside me here today and we've got a really exciting guest. I have no doubt that we'll hear some fascinating stories over the course of the next hour or so. We're going behind the scenes for this one and talking to a man who every Cherry's fan would recognise, but who barely any Cherry's fan will have spoken to. He plays a huge role at the club and is an essential part of the backroom team. So without further ado, we're delighted to welcome club doctor Craig Roberts onto the official AFC Bournemouth podcast. Craig, it's great to see you. Great to have you here with us. How are things and how much are you looking forward to speaking with us? Yeah, well, thank you very much for having me. I'm really looking forward to it. As you say, I'm always stuck in the backroom and that's probably a good thing. It means I'm not busy. Most of the fans kind of see me when I'm running on the pitch scrambling to try and help a player. So if they don't know me and don't see me, it means I'm not busy and that's the way we like to keep it. Well, we're going to go through a number of different topics. We're going to talk AFC Bournemouth. We're going to talk away from the pitch. We're going to talk about your past and that's exactly where we're going to start. We're going to go right back to the beginning, which takes you back to South Africa. Just talk us through your upbringing and what it was like to grow up in South Africa. Yeah, look, I was very lucky growing up in South Africa, as you all know, has got an amazing climate. And you take it for granted until you move to another country where everyone has to talk about the weather because it's not a perfect day every day. So it is a little bit different. I did grow up in South Africa in very turbulent time in the middle of apartheid era where there was a lot of change. Nelson Mandela was very active. I was a student in that time. So we kind of part of a lot of that change. So very turbulent time as a young student, but also a great opportunity to learn studying medicine at that time. You know, we saw some horrific things related to the violence in that in South Africa in that transition period. And it was a really good learning opportunity when you look back at it. Terrible at the time, but a really good learning opportunity in terms of what we saw and what we had to deal with. So very privileged in a way to have grown up there. My family is still there. So my parents are still alive in South Africa. So I try and get back to see them as often as we can, but it's been three years with COVID since I've been back. So hopefully this summer I get a chance to go home and get some sunshine. Even though it's winter, so I know it'll be pretty warm out there. So yeah, very happy here in the UK. And it was a good move for me and my family, but do still miss South Africa sometimes. When you're thinking, Craig, about being a doctor, becoming a doctor, you're studying and you're seeing everything that's going on. You mentioned that it's one of the best learning curves, I guess, inadvertently for you. Did it ever put you off? No, I didn't really. I was lucky in that I wanted to study sports medicine right from the beginning. So I studied medicine to be a sports doctor. At that stage, there was no such qualification as a sports medicine specialist. It didn't exist, but I knew I wanted to study medicine. I wanted to get involved in sport and that's what I was able to do. So literally as a young doctor and newly qualified, I just threw myself into whatever sport I could get and through that got some experience and some amazing opportunities came my way. So yeah, I've been really lucky that in over 20 years now, I've been working in elite sport, trying to help teams succeed and being really part of the team environment. And that's what I really love is it's a real team approach and you do feel part of the team. A lot of people, as you know, I remember when I thought I might want to be a physio one day because being a physio was running onto a football pitch with a bag. But of course, when you're training as a physio, there's so many things that you have to do before you get anywhere near that. So for you, I guess, then the message is get any experience you can in sport because that helped you, I guess, bridge the gap which are in qualifying and actually getting a job in elite sport. No, absolutely. I think you've got to position yourself to get there. My first year I just volunteered for a whole year. I just put my name out there and any sporting event I could find. I just said I'm available for that. So I did mountain bike races in the mountains. I did marathons, I did swimming events, I covered life saving. I didn't ask to get paid. I just wanted to put my name out there and show everyone that I'm really passionate about sport. And through that, you know, doors open and Dan, you go and that's the way it worked for me. Now, as you say, you studied sport and exercise medicine at Cape Town University, I think, from 1988 to 1994. What was it about sport? When was it that you realised that you wanted to do the sport side? Was it something that you had in your mind from a very young age? Or was it one particular incident that happened and you thought, I want to be like that or I want to do that? I want to be that guy that runs on the pitch. Yeah, I've always been passionate about sport. So for me, it was a way of staying involved with sport. I played sport, I played sport at university, but I wasn't ever at a real elite level. And it was a way of me and getting involved in sport from that. So literally from a very early age, I knew that I wanted to do medicine and I wanted to do sports medicine. So you have to do sports medicine, you have to study medicine first, which in South Africa is a seven-year degree. And then you come out as a general practitioner. And then after that, you have to study further to become a sports doctor. So at last count, I think I've spent 17 years at university studying. So it's a long route and in medicine you never stop. You actually, the day you stop learning is the day you fall behind. So my last degree was actually at Bournemouth Uni. So I'm an alumni of Bournemouth Uni, which I did a master's degree in musculoskeletal ultrasound, which I still use every single day. And I don't think you ever stop. I think in the medical field, you have to keep on learning. Funny enough, we're going to come onto that degree at Bournemouth University later on. But I just want to take you back when you were at Cape Tanya University, you mentioned about apartheid earlier. And I'm just wondering if you can give us a bit more of an insight as to what it was like studying medicine at that time, because there must have been an awful lot going on. Yeah, it was a very traumatic time. Us as young students were part of a movement trying to force change in the country, which thankfully eventually happened. But it was quite traumatic. There were a lot of clashes with police. I remember writing exams where there was tear gas drifting through the examination hall. Our university was a very liberal university. So we were forever under the scrutiny of the apartheid police at that time, always trying to shut things down and chase the students away. And we were demonstrating a lot. So, turbulent. But when I look back at it, really meaningful time. And I've still got some really good friends from that time, but not easy, a lot of violence. And as I said, as a young doctor learning, seeing all these injuries, you see horrific things that you don't want to wish on anyone. But if you try and look back at it, they actually taught us how to deal with really horrible things like necklacing and stabbings and shootings and that, which, you know, was a reality of things at that stage, I guess. Something I wanted to touch on with you, and it follows on from a conversation that we had a few weeks ago on an away day. When you're at university, you mentioned that you and your friends operated a 24-hour pub out of your uni house. Can you explain to everyone a bit more about that? Yeah, well, it was the tiniest pub in the house and it was called the Big Pub. And we just, a group of us who lived in the digs of the house together, we just decided that for our friends, we would operate a little pub in the back that you could knock on the door and we would never turn you away. So it grew and grew and grew in my seven years of university and became quite a big thing in the end. After all our rugby games, we had everyone coming around to the pub in the back garden, into the Big Pub, which was a tiny pub. But it brought all our friends together. We never made any money out of it. It was more of a place to have a late night drink when everything else closed. And a lot of fun and shenanigans happened there. I can't say any more, I'm afraid. I think what you did say, though, is you got to knock on the door at about 4am the night before one of your biggest exams. Yeah, well, we had this rule that you could never turn anyone away. And it was my night on duty. And I had an exam that morning and at 4am I had some people knocking on the door for some last round of drinks and we were the only place that could find that would open. Let's move it on to your career of starting out in sport, then, Craig. You started, obviously, in the rugby world in South Africa. Ten years as team physician and doctor for the Natile Sharks. How big an, I guess, an eye-opening experience was it for you being involved in rugby at the elite level? Because we all see what a, you know, a crash-bang wallet, height-contact sport rugby is. You were, I guess, thrown into the deep end in that kind of sport, were you? Yeah, you are. Rugby is a brutal, brutal sport. I think the more I spend time away from it, the more you realise how brutal it actually is. And, you know, it's a full-on collision sport and you do see horrific injuries. I really enjoy being on the touch line in rugby. I really enjoyed that. I think in football it's quite hard because you're stuck in the dugout, you're not allowed to move. In rugby, you're allowed to roam up and down the pitch. So you get a clearer view of what's happening. But you're also way more involved with the game. So you're wired up to the manager and you're giving messages and that. So it is a different role. Some of those injuries I've seen in rugby I don't want to ever see again. I think, you know, a lot of the time you're heightenly aware in a rugby game. You're thinking, what if this? What if that? What if this player goes down? What if this is a neck injury? Which can happen in football. You see some horrific injuries in football, but it's not nearly as common. So it's a tough, tough game. There are times there where you see guys colliding with each other and you think, how on earth are these players going to stand up and they just bounce up and carry on. But as again, it's a good learning experience. I'm not sure I would go straight back into rugby now. Having done football, I think you'd have to ease yourself back into it. But at the time, I really loved it. Amazing sport, but as a doctor, you were always on edge. I think my average heart rate was about 150 for every game. And that's not because I was running around. It's just because you're really anxious that something significant might happen that you have to deal with. This is a warning for anyone eating their breakfast while listening to this. Is there one injury that sticks in your mind for a really bad one? There are many. I've had players dislocate their knees where you've gone on the pitch and their legs sort of facing their hip and facing the wrong way. I've had horrible neck injuries. I had a player who went into a collision and got complete numbness down both arms, so it was effectively temporary, really paralysed. You know, all those things that you have to deal with, the hard ones are players who get knocked out cold and you run on the pitch. And you know, you always train, you know, if a player is knocked out, how to deal with it. But you know, when he's on the pitch and he's faced down and hasn't got an obstructed airway and difficult to deal with. And you're in front of a crowd of 100,000 people and a worldwide TV audience of millions focused in on you. You know, it's there's pressure, but you're trained to do that. And that's how we train as hard as we do is to be able to deal with those. So a lot of those are horrific, but they're going, you know, you're going to automatic mode to get it done. And when you look back at them, you think, oh, my goodness, you know, that really wasn't nice to deal with. So yes, I've had some some horrible ones. You mentioned there what was going to be my next question. Actually, if you're a doctor in A&E, you're surrounded, maybe doing it, making big decisions about someone's life surrounded by colleagues behind curtains in a cubicle. You might be making big decisions about somebody's life or, you know, future well-being, as you say, in the middle of a field, 100,000 people. How much are you able to bubble yourself and just take everything else out of it? The crowd booing, maybe throwing things onto the pitch, whatever might be happening. Yeah, I mean, that's why we train so hard. I mean, and that's what our training is all about is to like a trauma physician is you're going to automatic mode when it happens. So everything just happens at second nature. You've got sequences that you run through and those just go through without even really thinking about it. It's only afterwards when you kind of unpack it or debrief after the injury and say, how did we do? What could we do better? That you suddenly realize all the things that you have to do. And the important thing there, again, is you're all part of a team. I'm not on that pitch alone. I've got a medical team with me. I've got medical personnel who can help me on the pitch. We've all got roles. It's all rehearsed. We practice those over and over and over again. So we practice all those scenarios. So when it comes, it literally hopefully is automatic. Just before we come on to the spring box, I wanted to mention as well that in rugby union, of course, you're allowed to run on the pitch while the game's still going, aren't you? Have you ever been wiped out? Yeah, I have. I've been wiped out more than once, actually, which is which it was an interesting, yeah, it's an interesting experience, especially when you hear the whole crowd going, ooh, and the doctor gets taken out. But I did get cleaned out in New Zealand really badly. We ended up doing a back somersault and landing on my feet again. So you are on the pitch a lot. I wore a GPS for a few games. And I actually covered more than some players in a game as the medics. So on average, you do seven to eight kilometers in a game. In a rugby game, that's up and down the pitch, on and off, taking messages, running around. So it's a busy day, a rugby match, and I absolutely shattered at the end of the day. And you wonder why, and then you look at your GPS and you say, oh, now I realize why I'm so tired. So 2008, you take up the job as the team doctor for the spring box. Now, I guess as a sports fan in South Africa, that is one of the plumb jobs in sports medicine, isn't it? Yeah, that's the job that everyone wants. Everyone's clambering for that job. So I was really lucky to get that job. I think, obviously, spend some time at the Sharks. A lot of the Sharks players went on to become spring box. I ended up looking after them as well. And yeah, rarely privileged. I mean, it's looking after your national team, which is an iconic team in World Rugby and has kind of followed like a religion in South Africa. So very, very, very privileged to have that position. Was it a dream job? Because South Africa, I think, just won't work up before you joined them. Yeah, the prior World Cup, they hadn't done so well. So it was a dream job. And when I look back at why I studied medicine, if you actually look at it, it was, I wanted to be the team doctor for the spring box. So my dream had come true. How was your experience of being at World Cups? Obviously, I think you had two with the spring box when you were there. That must have been incredible. Yeah, World Cups are always special, no matter what sport you're involved in. It takes a lot of work building up to the World Cup in Rugby, it's every four years. So it's a four-year buildup into that six-week tournament. And it is special. I did one in New Zealand and one in England. And both of them were very different, but very special to my heart. And there's not many doctors who'd be able to say, I've done World Cups, never mind, too. So as again, I feel really privileged to be part of those two. How does it compare being the South African team doctor to working with the sharks, for example? Because I imagine the sharks, they have games a lot more regularly. In South Africa, you have international breaks and whatnot. So how does it compare? Was it as full on, more full on, less full on? It's different in provincial rugby. There are a lot more games, obviously. In international rugby, I think the most games we played was 15 in a year. So it's periods of really intense moments and then periods of relatively quiet time. So there's time to kind of recharge the batteries between tours and between games. Rugby's always a seven-day turnaround when you're on tours, which is also nice. So you've got, you literally, all your decisions are, is this player going to be ready in seven days or not? Is he going to be ready in seven days or not? So except for a World Cup where it's a little bit more congested. So sometimes it's nice to have games that can fast, but when you're picking up as many injuries as you do in rugby, sometimes you think, thank heavens we've got seven days until the next game. Was there a moment, as doctor of the national team, that was slightly more challenging or that sticks out in your mind as being more challenging than others? Yeah, I wouldn't really want to highlight anyone in particular. I think there's always a lot of pressure around the games. There's a lot of hype around the games. They are more intense and you do have to make decisions under that pressure. I've had, you're also wired up to the manager who's got direct contact into your ear. So that has its challenges as well. I've worked with many different managers. Some of them are amazing and some of them get really emotional on the day. And I've had a few where you've got the manager trying to convince you that this player needs to carry on and stay on the pitch and you know clearly he can't. And those are the kind of conflicts I don't miss, but I've had a few, one in a World Cup actually where eventually I literally had to take my earpiece out of my ear and just walk the player off the pitch because he had taken a knock to the head. He was clearly not able to continue. And in the moment, the manager was very keen for him to stay on and he obviously didn't know the information that I had and was pushing me to try and keep him on. But I always had those discussions with the managers beforehand. There's certain non-negotiables and that's a non-negotiable with the player. So we were left a man down in a very crucial position but that player couldn't carry on. So I don't want to have many of those decisions, but sometimes you have to make those. We've got a couple more questions on that theme, which we'll come back to you actually a little bit later on, but just staying on the spring box seemed to keep it all together. As part of the role for the national team, you had to do press conferences, I think I'm right in saying that. I was just saying to you before we came on air, you've been here for seven years. I've never really spoken to you, Greg, at all that time because I'm the media really. So you don't have to do things like have to speak to me, which a lot of people would rather didn't have to do. Did you enjoy that having to front up and explain things to the media, to the spring box public? Yeah, I actually really enjoyed it. I had to do a top table conversation once a week when we were in camp and the spring box were playing. So I really enjoyed it because there's opportunity to educate the public. I think sometimes around injuries, unless it's a medical personnel giving the information, the information is often filtered a lot. It's not really accurate. It may be twisted in terms of trying to give the information that you want the opposition to know rather than what's actually factual. So I appreciate that, but I really did enjoy the opportunity to hopefully educate the public around the injuries and why we're making decisions that we were. So for all that time, I used to have a weekly press conference myself, which I actually really enjoyed. I think there's a case for bringing that in here. I'm going to go and speak to Neil Blake and Scott Parker. Let's get that in. Was there any occasions where under that pressure and people firing questions that you came out with someone that you think, probably I'd like to catch that and take that back and not say that? Yeah, but you're going to ask me for an example and I'm not going to give it to you, but there are those moments. I think same thing. You've got to know your journalists. You've got to know their agendas. Every journalist got an agenda. Often stories are pre-written and they're just looking for that sound bite that is the cherry on the top of their story. So you've got to be aware of that. And that's where having your media team or press team briefing you to the watch out for this. Let's avoid that. So you kind of learn the tricks of the trades almost like a politician in terms of saying a lot, but actually saying nothing sometimes. Do you think that could work in football, didn't it? Shouldn't it should be more clarity? And you mentioned all the reasons why there sometimes isn't because of tactical and whatever and obviously personal information and situations as well. But do you think there's ever a case in football for medical personnel being the ones to deliver updates on people? I think probably down the line there is. Football is a lot more controlled and I think the information that goes out is very measured from the managers and sometimes they like that. So whether they open to medical personnel sharing some of that information, I guess depends on the manager and the situations around the club at the time. But as I said, I like the opportunity to educate people. I like to be as transparent as possible. And for me, that's the way of sharing things accurately. Just one more on being front and centre. Did you get recognised? Out of Springboks sort of camp or match situations, did people recognise you from the TV as the guy that runs on the field? Well, that's one of the joys I've been born with is I can go to Sainsbury's and no one knows me. In South Africa, wherever I went, I was getting a tap on the shoulder or someone was wanting to ask about a player. So, yeah, I was recognisable and I quite like being incognito down here. Now, the time came, I think you've done it, seven years being with Springboks, you decided to leave. Was it a hard decision? Yeah, it was hard. I mean, my initial passion was always rugby. I played rugby for a long time and through all those years, you kind of understand it. So, to moving to a relatively new sport that I didn't know that well was a little bit daunting and I do still miss it. But I think at that stage, I'd done my time in rugby and I was ready for a new challenge. I'd had quite a few offers over the years and I always turned them down because I didn't think I was quite right. But when the Bournemouth role came, it ticked so many boxes and I always wanted to come and work in the UK and obviously we're going into the Premier League at that stage, so it was a massive opportunity and I still thoroughly enjoy it. Is that what it was? It was purely the job offer from Bournemouth came in and you thought, I'm going to go and try that and that is what's going to make me move to England. Yeah, basically, I've always wanted to be involved in the Premier League and as I said Bournemouth had just been promoted, there were the new kids on the block in the Premier League and they were looking to expand their medical team and the opportunity came and I thought, it's a town on the coast, I can still go surfing, I can do the things that I want and work in the Premier League and that's why I took it without hesitation. So now you've worked in football for six, seven years. What are the main differences between working in football and working in rugby? It's taken me about that time to learn about football and even then I don't think I really fully understand. It's different, initially when I came across you kind of try and put your rugby hat on with footballers and you can't, I think it is very different. Rugby is much more of players working together so a player can be at 80% and his teammates can cover him. I think in football you're a lot more exposed, they're a lot more one-on-one jewels and if a player's not absolutely 100% they get exposed. So you kind of find players in rugby will be able to play through things when in football, you can't play through that and it's not that they can't do it, it's just that they can't function at the high, high level to be able to do that. So because of the one-on-one scenarios that's the way I interpreted it anyway. And it's a completely different sport so as I say I'm learning it and I'm still learning it. You've worked with rugby players, you've worked with football players. Is there a difference, is there a big difference between the two or do they all kind of come under the professional athlete umbrella and there are a lot of similarities? They're all professional athletes, it's a different sport in itself. I don't like to generalise, I don't think you can generalise that rugby players are like this, football players are like that. Everyone's their own person and they're all different and that's a challenge in our job is understanding the individual because everyone is different. Some players respond to this, some players respond to that. You know, I'll have some rugby players that, you know, you kind of joker, break the leg and throw it over their shoulder and still want to carry on playing, you know. There are other rugby players who will have an ingrown toenail and they don't want to play. So you can't generalise and say football, rugby, they're very different sports and that's what I've learnt over this time. First of all, you're sat here, Craig, with your AFC Bournemouth top on, it's got Doc written on it. I wonder how many of the lads over there know that your name is actually Craig? I think my whole career I've been called Doc, I think you could go back 20 years and they'd still call me Doc. How does it work here in terms of with the manager? I mean, obviously you've worked under different managers here, quite a few in the last couple of years. I think we're right in saying already how you used to have a meeting every morning to update how the injured lads were getting on, how has that maybe changed and how was that under ready? Yeah, it hasn't changed much, to be honest. We still, as a medical and performance team, we meet every single morning as a big department. First thing on the day is a meeting to discuss the players. So we discuss all the players, we discuss the injured players. And then from there, the head of performance and myself go to the manager and feedback that information. So it's a daily morning meeting just to feedback where we are. The manager is always interested who's available to train, who can't train, so what we call training numbers. I'll give him a printed sheet of these are the players available. These players might be slightly modified in training. These ones can train, these ones can't train, these ones are injured and this is where they are. So meet every morning. I have another meeting every afternoon at the close of play just to update the manager again in this environment. Things change quickly. So the information you might have given in the morning can be very different to the information you give in the afternoon. So literally two meetings a day, sometimes the afternoon one is very short, just updating because it's a very fluid environment. And between those two meetings, how much direct contact do you have with some of the injured players? Because obviously you've got a sports science team and obviously physio guys as well, who maybe are doing a lot of the rehab stuff. How much hands on are you between nine and five, if you like? Yeah, as I said, it's very much a team approach. We've got some amazing individuals in our medical and performance team and it only works when you all work together. So everyone's got skills and we need to tap into all their skills. So the actual day-to-day rehab process is done by our physios and our medical team. I obviously keep an eye on that, but really they're the ones who drive the process. And we work really, really closely together. That's important. You have to work closely together. You've got to trust each other, be very transparent in what's going on. And that's why we have so many meetings to share that information. So we're all involved with them every day. How is the relationship with football? As you mentioned, the difference between some footballers and sports people generally, they're all going to be, you know, someone more willing to get out there than others. But in terms of sometimes players, they always say they want to run before they can walk. You know, they may be trying to desperate to get back for a certain game or a run in or something. How much do you have to sometimes use your relationship with the player to say, look, you're not ready yet? Yeah, and that's we understanding your your players so important and having a relationship. And it takes time to build that relationship. But I remember coming in and players not really trusting you in your calls. And it takes time to develop that trust. And that's that's through developing a relationship and hopefully consistently making accurate calls that the players sort of start to trust you. And as I say, that does take time and it's and it's really about clear, transparent conversations with the player as to why are we going to push now or we're not going to push. There's a lot of factors at play. And, you know, we talk about performance medicine, which is very different to the medicine you'd practice as a GP in your surgery and performance medicine. You're looking at, you know, yes, you're looking at the players, your patient, but you're looking at where is the team at the moment? What are the other injuries we have in that position? Where are we on the table? How big a game is this? Do we have momentum? There are all sorts of things that you that you have to take into consideration. So it's more performance medicine of the team. But bearing in mind that the player is your number one priority and it's trying to merge those all together. That's the that's the challenging thing. This is a real layman's question. But in performance medicine, what is the most difficult injury, the ones we hear about all the time for you as a doctor and as a medical team to get right in terms of planning the rehab process? Look, they're always horrible injuries. I think the ones that are the toughest are the ones that are the real long term injuries. So you take a player like Lewis Cook has come back from two from two ACL injuries. You know, those are really long term injuries. And it's it's it's tough. Those ones, you know, from the very beginning, having to break the news to the player, this is what you've got. This is your time frames through the whole process because, you know, nine months sometimes it can take sometimes even longer to get the player back on the pitch and even longer before they back really performing. So we're with the player every every part of that journey. And we try and break it down into little little steps and the little manageable bites, but it does get tough. You know, the players get grumpy. Sometimes we get grumpy sometimes and it's just human nature. And it's it's getting through all those that are, you know, the challenging parts. Now, five years into your time at the club and we hit with a global pandemic. Can anything prepare you for that? Oh, I'll tell you what, we we look back at now at it now and kind of chuckle at all the things we had to do and all the hoops we had to jump through and the hoops kept moving and they kept shifting and I'm glad we kind of it looks like we're at the back end of it anyway, in terms of returning to normality. My job changed dramatically. I kind of feel I took on two jobs at that time. But but anyone in the medical profession, you know, felt the same. You know, I think my workload went up. But I just kept on looking at all the sort of medical professionals on the front line thinking, thank heavens, I'm not there because their workload has gone absolutely through the roof. So I was lucky in a way. It was a lot of logistics and planning and screening and testing. And I think those first two weeks, I just spent walking around the car park, testing temperatures and doing PCR tests on players. So we kind of joke and laugh when we look back at it now. But it was a challenging time. And at that stage, you know, we didn't know a lot about COVID. And there was there was real fear about contacting it and what what if you were that person who didn't respond well to it. Now, obviously, you know, a lot more about it. People have been vaccinated. People are a bit more relaxed about it. But it was intense, particularly in the beginning. Well, if one of the questions I wanted to ask you, you come across so cool, calm, collected. But when we didn't know much about it back in March 2020 in April 2020, was there a part of you that was sort of thinking, gosh, we don't know about much about this and we don't know what problems it could potentially cause if one of our players was to contract it. Yeah, and that was the worry is the fear of what what would happen if someone contracted it and had a had a bad reaction to it. I lost two colleagues that I worked directly with from COVID over that period in South Africa. So it was a very, very real thing and a very real concern. And I think that's why we're initially incredibly strict in trying to obey the protocols that were forever changing week by week. But they were there for a reason. So when you look back at it now, you think, well, what were we thinking? Or why did we do that? But at the time, there was a very real fear of we don't know. For you, obviously, you have the role as the club doctor. But in that initial period where everyone was at home, people couldn't go out. They couldn't come to training. No one was meant to be working. Were you in contact with the players on a regular basis? Yeah, I mean, we were in touch with the players on a daily basis. It was a tricky time because the league was suspended, but we didn't know when we were going to return. So players were at home, but we were still trying to prepare them for a game that we didn't know when it was going to happen. So it kept on getting postponed and postponed and postponed. So, you know, we had players doing training programs at home. We had Zoom sessions trying to keep the players fit, you know, phoning them, you know, every couple of days. How are you doing, keeping in touch with them? So, yeah, it was challenging at the time. And mainly because we didn't know when we were going to be back and when things were going to kick off again. When they did come back, you could only train in groups of five and everyone had to come in at staggered times. It must have been a long day for you if people were coming in from sort of eight o'clock in the morning all the way through to the afternoon. Yeah, it was tough for all the staff. I mean, we would start at eight in the morning and finish at six at seven at night because you had five groups of five coming through to do exactly the same thing. But as I say, at that stage, that's what we had to do. We didn't know when the games were going to start again. So, yeah, fun times when you look back at it, but I don't want to go through it again. No, I'm sure. We're just at the stage now where, as you mentioned earlier on, hopefully things are at least getting under control a little bit. We hope everything's, you know, from a footballing sense now, we've just lost red zones. I think I've now gone, haven't they, from match day? So everything in terms of being a ground operationally is going back to normal as well. How hard was it for you for your own situation as well in terms of your mental health and everything else? Because you've got to look after yourself and everybody else as well as being responsible for these players you've spoken about. Yeah, I think it was tough for everyone. I think everyone in the world really was struggled with it. For me, I was always mindful that, yes, my workload had gone up dramatically. There was a lot more pressure and stress around that, but it was nothing compared to the frontline workers what they were going through. So for me, I actually felt, you know, actually my workloads, nothing compared to what real hardcore doctors were doing on the frontline. They had it really tough. Let's move it on from COVID and leave that sort of negative, hopefully, couple of years behind us. The relationship between you and the physio, where every time a player goes down on the field, we see you and Nick Court go dashing onto the pitch, sometimes just Nick, usually then sometimes followed by you. I've always name-checking you in commentary and there goes Nick Court, there goes Dr. Craig Roberts. What's the, talk us through the process when you get to an injured player on the pitch, when do you decide to go on, because you don't always go on, who's talking to the player? What's the process there that fans see every day in a game? Yeah, I'll only go on if it's on the close side of the pitch. No, I always joke with that. But if it looks like a really nasty mechanism or I can see that it's a horrible injury, I'll go on. Most of the time, Nick will go on first as kind of first responder. We all wired up, we connected with radios and we have certain calls that we did. We use different colors, like a traffic light system to know how bad the injury is. And we're in constant communication. We'll have a member of our staff looking at the video review as well. While Nick's running on the pitch, we're getting information in our ear in terms of looks like this, it was an inversion, this happened, this happened. So by the time you get to the player, you've got a little bit of information because sometimes sitting in the dugout, I'll have the manager, the assistant manager and the defensive coach all standing in front of us and you just see a player go down and actually you haven't been able to really see the mechanism. So we do have other members of staff sit quite high up in the stands kind of spotting what's going on and that's where trusting your team and everyone talking is really important. So, and then, yeah, we all trained. We have to be trained. There's a protocol that we go through when a player is seriously injured and as I said, that becomes an automatic process on the pitch. You're not wired, you mentioned earlier, you're wired up to managers in rugby and you're not wired up directly to the coaching team in the dugout in this situation. No, it's just the medical team all wired up. Yeah. And when you're making those decisions between yourself and the physio and the other teams, how much conflict is there sometimes? Who gets the final say on things? You the boss? Yeah, I'm the boss, but we all work together. I don't think there's been any conflict in all these times. I think a lot of the decisions, if it's whether a player is coming off or not, are pretty clear cut. You kind of, we all experience in our medical team and kind of know when that's the case. There are times where you, what we call an amber call where we're not sure if the player can continue or not and you might patch them up a little bit and say, well, you know, say to the manager, we're going to give him a couple of minutes, see if he can manage and if he can't, we'll have to make the subs. We work really well together and I think we kind of, we have a second sense between all of us in terms of what's going on. So there's very little conflict. What are the players like here in terms of, particularly on a match day when you're in the adrenaline environment of a game, what are the players like this squad at Bournemouth for, I guess, responding to what you're telling them how they are and whether they can carry on those kind of things? Yeah, I wouldn't draw into the whole team. I think every player is different. And that's what you say, you've got to know your players, there's certain players, you've got to give a bit of time, you've got to give a bit of space, let them breathe a little bit and sometimes just buying time on the pitch helps. So often we'll go in there and it doesn't look like we're doing anything and that's because probably aren't doing a lot, we're just giving the player time to pull himself back into the moment, into the space and then you can do a proper assessment and have a proper conversation. But it comes down again to knowing your players, everyone's different. That is not time-wasting for anybody listening, that is not the doctor involved with any kind of time-wasting antics whatsoever. No, we wouldn't be doing that. We want to spread it on to medicals as well because one of the times you are front and centre for Bournemouth fans is on the behind-the-scenes videos that the superb team here at the Cherries do. We see you all the time welcoming players in, going through the initial medicals and things like that. The deadline there that's just gone, of course, in January was probably the busiest you'll have. How do you feel about those kind of days? I love them because it means you're bringing a lot of players in. Look, it is busy and you don't have a lot of time to make some pretty big calls. So the club's spending a lot of money on players and you have to hopefully make the right call. And really what a medical is, is about assessing risk. What is the risk of assigning this player? Can he play the way we'd like to play and can he perform? So you can't predict all injuries. Injuries happen, it's a contact sport, it's a collision sport. Injuries always happen, but we try and look to see whether we can try and mitigate that as much as possible. And thankfully, there's not many times I've had to say, we can't sign this player. A lot of the medicals is risk stratifying so that we know what strategies we need to put in place to hopefully keep the player fit and keep him on the pitch. Having spent well over 20 years in the medical industry, what was it that made you want to go back and do a second master's? I know earlier you said that you have to keep learning, you have to keep evolving, but for you, what was it that made you want to go back and do that? Was it purely that? Well, you do never stop learning and it was a great opportunity. My master's was in musculoskeletal ultrasound. So I've been fortunate to be, for 10 years, I've been doing ultrasound, but I had no formal training. I was kind of self-taught in the medical, well, sports medicine field around ultrasound. And Born With Uni ran a really good program and I had the opportunity to do that. So my master's was in musculoskeletal ultrasound, which I use every single day. So it's a great tool to have in terms of helping not only make diagnoses, but also educate the player around the injury. So I'm literally scanning every day. So it's one of those that I certainly keep using. One of your hobbies away from football, we all know that you like a good day out on the waves. You're a big surfer. Just tell us a bit more about that. Is that something that goes back to your younger days in South Africa? Yeah, there's very few people in South Africa who don't surf, to be honest, especially if you live on the coast. So it was one of the things I looked at when Born With came knocking all those years. I knew about Born With, but it's the first thing I look at. Where is it on the coast and do they get some waves? And yeah, the waves aren't as good as South Africa, that's for sure, but we do get some decent waves from kind of September to April. And yeah, I'm really lucky. I still go out right through the year. You'll see me, I'm more of a ninny now and I don't surf as much as I'm more paddleboard because you're out of the cold water when you're paddleboarding. But literally right through the winter when they waves, I'll be out there catching those waves and it's part of me and it's part of what I really enjoy. You also make your own boards, don't you? That's quite something. Yeah, I've always said medicine will be part of my life and it won't be my whole life. A lot of people are going to medicine, get consumed by medicine and that's all they do. So I always have lots of hobbies. One of them is woodwork. I do a lot of woodwork. I've just finished building my house and I've built furniture for my house and I've kind of run out of things to build. And then I did an online course on building wooden surfboards. So that's my passion at the moment and I go home in the evenings. I build Hollywood surfboards and I really enjoy it. Can I just rewind 10 seconds, Dot? You said I've just finished building my house. Well, I bought a house that needed a lot of work and I've done most of the work on the house. Is this here or in South Africa? No, yeah, in the UK, yeah. Wow. I mean, a lot of people talk about elite sport as being all-consuming and like trying to get away whenever you can. You've got time to build a house. Yeah, that sounds bad I think. I'm always mindful about balance and I said medicine won't be my life, it's just part of my life. And I really enjoy working with my hands. It's one of the things I'm gifted in doing. And yeah, I bought a really rundown house that we had to just strip everything out and start from scratch. And I've really enjoyed it. I did get some tradespeople in to do the really hard work but most of it I did ourselves. And yeah, it was long evenings in the summer working late and I try not to watch TV when I get home. I always want to do something. So I make the point of doing something with my hands. We've got some fans questions which we'll get onto in just a moment. I've got a couple more I wanted to ask you first of all which was you mentioned about why you came here and the challenge of being in the Premier League. You've been here seven years now. The teams on the cusp of going back to the Premier League hopefully. What's made you stay all that time because there have been so many changes here? Oh, it's an amazing place to live. This is not the standard UK here. I mean, I think my kids spend more time on the beach here than they do in South Africa. I'm fortunate my house is only 100 metres from the beach but every single day I'm on the beach walking the dog or surfing or doing something. So I think the work-life balance here is really good. I really enjoy born with obviously a small club but that's even better that it's such a small club that actually performs as well as it does. So yeah, we're really excited as well. You know, we've got to finish off the season strong now and do the job. But yeah, I love it here. My family's really settled and they absolutely adore it. What's your future ambitions? Do you see your future ambitions as building another house and retiring here on the Bournemouth beach eventually? How do you see the next few years going? Yeah, I can't say. I just think we need to get back in the Premier League and push on from there. Very diplomatic answer, which the manager would have been proud of, I'm sure. Last one for me, which was before Zoe comes onto the fans' questions was, again, going back to slightly the medical side of it. Obviously, when we go and see our doctor, there's things about patient confidentiality and things like that. How does that work in football clubs? Because obviously, all the information about a patient presumably needs to be shared with the manager or whoever else. How does that kind of thing get dealt with in an elite sport? It's not unique to football. It is, as you say, it's a elite sport scenario. And it's always tricky because we do have to share medical information with the manager and certain people. When the players are contracted, there's a clause in the contract where they sign consent for us to share that information. That doesn't mean we can go and spew forth to anybody, but certain people have to have access to that information. And it's part of being a professional sportsman. I'm not going to share everything, but in terms of injury information and return to play and those sort of things, that information has to be shared as part of the performance process, really. So it's a conversation with the players as well as they do consent to it as part of their contracts, which is pretty standard worldwide, really, in elite sport. And does that ever put you in a difficult position where there are things that might not be in that direct sphere that you talk about, that you would normally share, that you think actually might be relevant for whatever reason? Yes, sometimes. And I think that's where experience counts and there are certain things that obviously you won't share. The player is your patient first and you must never lose track of that. So that's your number one relationship and sometimes you just absolutely don't break that. Now, as Chris said, we are going to come onto some fun questions. These have been submitted on social media throughout the morning and we're going to start with one that's coming from Twitter. Given your background with the spring box, are there lessons that football can learn from rugby? Whoa, it's an interesting question. I've got to be a little diplomatic answer it. I think rugby can learn from football and football can learn from rugby. They, as I said before, they're very different sports. It took me a while to kind of realize that foot, exactly how different they are. Let's leave it at that for now. Have you implemented anything at AFC Bournemouth from your experience above and beyond what is currently typical? Yeah, I think so. I mean, we're forever evolving. As a medical team, as an organization, you have to keep evolving. If you stay static, you're going backwards. So we're forever pushing the boundaries. We're ever trying to evolve. I don't think it's purely me bringing ideas, but I think everyone involved in the team is always bringing ideas. We try to be as innovative as possible. And that's part of our sort of DNA, our sort of process going forward is you always got to be looking at what's new, where can we go, how can we change this, how can we improve? So we're forever evolving. I wouldn't want to put my finger on, I did this. It's a continual process. We're always looking to get better. Final one that's been submitted. I think this is a really interesting one. Would you like to see proper off-field concussion assessment without the time pressure of the game needing to restart? Yeah, without a doubt. And I think it'll probably end up going there. I think rugby has, that's probably the one where we I think rugby has led the way in identifying and trying to manage concussion and football. Football's catching up. There's got some really good things in place, but I do think there's still a little way to go that we need to push with football. Absolutely. Well, Craig, it's been an absolute pleasure having you on our podcast with us. We've loved your company, your fascinating stories, and we really appreciate your time. So thank you so much for joining us. Now then, if you've enjoyed listening to our podcast, we would absolutely love it if you could like and subscribe on whatever platform you're listening on. We'd also be very grateful for any shares on social media, so that other fans, be it FC Bournemouth related or the general football or rugby fan can enjoy it too. Our thanks again to Craig Roberts and from Chris Temple and myself, Zoe Rundle. Thank you for tuning in to the official AFC Bournemouth podcast.