Four players in the current Sunderland squad have made Premier League appearances in their careers. Alex Pritchard, Patrick Roberts, Mason Burstow and Niall Huggins.
Coming through the youth ranks at Leeds has been part of a challenging journey, but is hopefully now becoming a rewarding and triumphant comeback trail.
By trade, Huggins was never nurtured into the beautiful game as a full-back. His development saw him further up the pitch under the stewardship of a certain ex-Argentina manager, Marcelo Bielsa.
Huggins told Red & White: “Up until maybe up the age of 14, I was probably an average player. I played on the wing which was where I was up until the age of 20. 15 or 16 was where I really kicked on and where I stepped up ahead of the other lads and got my scholarship.
“Towards the end of my first year, I got a chance in the youth side and played well. They put me at right-back for those games. Going into the second season, they started me at full-back and that is when I kicked on again. I started to get more involvement in training every day and I started to get picked for training a lot more.
“Then I came on against Arsenal away in the Premier League, I didn’t really expect it at all. I was hoping to make my debut in the FA Cup game against Crawley the week before but I didn’t get picked to come on, so I was gutted because I thought that was my chance for the year. Then a week later, they were 4-0 down and they brought me on at half-time.
“It was one of them where I didn’t even have a chance to get nervous because it was so unexpected. But I came on and did alright to be fair and it finished 4-2. That was obviously amazing. I had been at the Club for 15 years and to make my debut was amazing."
His development meant Sunderland came calling in the summer of 2021 when he put pen-to-paper on a four-year deal to move to Wearside.
Delighted to sign a four year deal at such a huge club, can’t wait to get started 🔴⚪️ #SAFC @SunderlandAFC pic.twitter.com/mIm6bMJ4wg
— Niall Huggins (@Niall_Huggins) August 20, 2021
For a footballer at the age of 22, an upward trajectory for a career of longevity and success in the game is ordinarily always the target. For Niall Huggins, it’s been nothing short of a turbulent journey of physical torment and consistent setbacks.
After two long seasons of physical recovery, the hope is the corner has now been turned as he finds his feet in a Sunderland shirt after two years.
A footballer who has sustained as many lengthy injuries as Niall will often come up against some serious mental barriers. Not only did the full-back have to deal with the torment of setback after setback, but the lack of a concrete medical explanation from professionals and experts across the country was also the biggest kicker for him as he persisted in making his comeback.
“When you see and hear things, I never wanted to be labelled as injury prone”, said Huggins who has started in Sunderland’s last four league games. “I don’t think many people understand the actual extent of the weirdness of the injuries and how uncommon they were.
“I was travelling to London once a month to see a specialist and we never got an exact answer as to why this was happening. I spoke to a genetic specialist, I did probably every test you could ever think of which were body related, bone related. Everything came back how it should be which was a fit and healthy 21-year-old. There was never any outstanding thing which was the answer. That was probably the hardest thing to get over.
“You want to be available, but I just never got an answer as to why this was happening. That was the hardest thing to get my head around. Every time I did break down, it was just another case of ‘why is this happening?’
“It took a whole season and a bit to push past it. It’s not happened since which is good news.”
His progression back into the first-team has been nothing short of hard work and overcoming adversity. But while Huggins’ inclusion in the side has been a major positive, nothing has been achieved just yet.
📈 Growing with every game.#SAFC | @Niall_Huggins pic.twitter.com/gEFbcEYsRa
— Sunderland AFC (@SunderlandAFC) October 2, 2023
“I totally understand that I have got to prove myself”, he continued. “The first two games I started, for me it was getting past the injuries and getting the body working which was the main thing. I took me a long time to get over that. Once I did, it’s more of the ability side of things.
“The first two games, I was trying to get my confidence in. At Championship level, sometimes you can find yourself finding it hard to focus if you are not up to that fitness level. In the recent Cardiff game, that was probably the fittest I’ve felt, and I felt like how I was when I first joined.
“Now I just have to keep proving myself, stay in that team and get a good run of games under my belt which I’ve need for a while.”