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Complex Musculoskeletal Injury Clinic

Mark’s Story

Dr James Noake

Dr James Noake

Consultant in Sport, Exercise & Musculoskeletal Medicine

  • 22 September, 2026
  • Complex Musculoskeletal Injury Clinic
  • Stories
  • 1 min read

 

“Pro football has gone, so what do I replace it with?  Golf – it’s my life!

I was working really hard, hitting 100s of balls a day on my documented mission to reduce my handicap to 4… not an easy feat.

Then I started to get a worsening pain in the side of my chest – it was manageable to start, then I was struggling to swing a club, sit up, even pick up my kid.

I consulted with the top physiotherapists in football – they told me that it was it was 90% likely going to be an intercostal ‘strain’ – ‘Chat GPT’ told me it was going to be exactly the same thing.

They suggested I seek James’s help when I couldn’t get a hard diagnosis and it wasn’t healing in the normal time frames.

Literally, within one minute of speaking to me on the phone James said,” This is a rib stress fracture”.

I put the phone down thinking: “That can’t be – how can you know that? You haven’t even seen or assessed me; everyone else has said the opposite.”

I went for my MRI scan and – lo and behold – he was right!

He’s the only person I would ever see now if I need to get a diagnosis on any sports injury going forward.”

 

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