WHEN Joe Partington headed for the relative backwater of Eastleigh in January 2015 you’d have got pretty long odds on him ever carving out a career in the Football League.

Longer still if he’d opened a window into his emotions at the time. Partington was, by his own admission, feeling “a little bit useless”.

It had all started so promisingly. Partington made his Cherries debut at the tender age of 17 and scored his first goal for the club as an 18-year-old – in a 2-1 victory at Swansea.

He was in the team on the day of Eddie Howe's managerial bow.

But while his former club’s story in the intervening years has been one of almost unbroken success, Partington has latterly been piecing back together a career that was in danger of being torpedoed by his rotten luck with injuries.

And his reward for two years of excellence in an Eastleigh shirt arrived this month with a move to upwardly mobile League One club Bristol Rovers.

Partington never lost faith in his ability to engineer a second coming as a League footballer – but when his original loan stint with Eastleigh expired at the end of the 2014-15 season he had cause to wonder if anyone shared his belief.

He told the Daily Echo: “I was worried, because I felt I had played well enough to spark some interest.

“But after talking to (then Eastleigh boss) Richard Hill I decided my best option – after missing so much football – was to sign for Eastleigh (permanently), get back to playing football and play consistently well.

“People saw my age and the number of games I’d played in the couple of years leading up to when I left Bournemouth – and it didn’t look good."

Those injuries. A fractured tibia in April 2013 was setback enough at a time when Howe was working closely with the player on his conversion from a midfielder into a central defender.

The infection he picked up following surgery, however, and the four further operations needed to cure that problem, would surely amount to all the ill-fortune fate could throw at one footballer?

While stepping up his recovery with a loan spell at Aldershot in February 2014 Partington ruptured the lateral collateral ligament in his knee.

Bolts and screws were inserted into the joint during its subsequent reconstruction.

Consequently, five years after turning out in a 2-1 defeat at Darlington as Howe's reign got off to an inauspicious start, Partington had to make do with a front-row seat as the manager masterminded Cherries' rise through the leagues.

“It was such a good place to be when the club was having so much success,” he says.

“I was so happy for the guys and for the club. But not being directly involved in that success, you question your usefulness. You feel a little bit useless.

“I was injured, I couldn’t train, I couldn’t contribute to the team – and when they’re doing so well without you, you wonder ‘am I going to have a career here or not?’

“The reality is you’re not, so you have to get your head around that and crack on.

“I had to decide if I was still going to try to make a career out of football or, if because one team had success without me being part of it, I was going to pack it in.

“I decided I was going to get my head down and work my way through it.”

Despite embarking on that process away from Howe, his time working under Cherries’ boss still influences Partington today.

In new club Bristol Rovers and their exceptional boss Darrell Clarke, the same age as Howe, at 39, Partington identifies similarities with the team and manager he left on the verge of their promotion to the Premier League.

“Eddie’s such a great manager,” he says. “I spent a lot of time with him on the training pitch.

“His attention to detail in terms of his coaching has stuck with me and I think a lot of the attributes I have are down to the work I did with him.

“The opportunity to work with another manager who is young and enthusiastic, and in a League One environment, is one I’ve worked hard for. I couldn’t pass it up."

Partington has joined a side chasing a third successive promotion, a tight-knit bunch who demanded he introduce himself by singing for their entertainment at the team hotel last Friday.

The day after belting out The Zutons’ Valerie he was thrust straight into action, a second half-substitute in Rovers’ 3-1 defeat at fellow play-off contenders Fleetwood.

“To get my debut out of the way was good,” says Partington.

“The result was disappointing, but I can focus on playing now and not put too much pressure on myself. I’ve been given an opportunity to play and that’s what I’m going to do.

“Physically and technically I’m going to challenge myself to be better.

“My ambition was to get back into the league, but I don’t feel I’ve achieved anything because I still have to prove to everyone I can play at this level.”

Partington reserves the last word for his musical choice: “I sang Valerie, because it’s quite simple and I know the words.

“Even though you expect people to join in, no one ever does. You just have to get up and get it done.”

Getting up and getting it done.

That’s Joe Partington to a tee.