ROBERT Thomson has turned down his contract offer from Morton and says he wants to put his two-year injury nightmare behind him.

The forward has been plagued by injury for most of his time at the club.

The 25-year-old first suffered a groin injury back in September 2017 just months after joining the Ton, and despite playing 46 times in the last two seasons, he was at times going through the pain barrier.

He had an operation last summer on his hernia to try and fix the issue, however the procedure was unsuccessful.

Thomson had further injections to try and clear it up, but again it didn’t solve anything.

After getting the injury properly diagnosed recently, the former Dumbarton player had a successful operation on his groin at the start of the month. Thomson says Morton paid for it after he agreed following months of discussions to terminate his own contract at the start of May, so that the club could recoup half of the costs for the operation.

The ex-Dundee United youth player admits after everything that had gone on he was surprised to get an offer for next season.

While was happy to receive one from new manager David Hopkin, he admits everything that events had a big influence on his decision to move on.

He told the Tele: “My operation was at the start of May, and I came to an agreement with the club that I would release myself early from my contract and the club would pay for the operation, meaning that they would recoup half of the cost of the operation in unpaid wages to myself.

“I’ve been working since then to try and get some more money as I’ve not been getting a wage from football since leaving Morton.

“I had come to an agreement with Crawford [Rae, club chairman], and I’m grateful for the fact he was able to pay for some of it.

“But at the same time they are a full-time club and the fact I had to pay half of it impacted my decision to stay.

“Morton had offered me a contract and that was one of the reasons why I turned it down.

“I spoke to Hoppy, his assistant and Dave MacKinnon [club’s chief executive] on Monday. The opportunity to work with Hoppy was very appealing along with all the positive changes he is implementing at the club.

“I was grateful for the offer, however, after everything that went on after the last couple of months I was a wee bit reluctant to accept it and thought there was maybe too much water under the bridge and it was time to move on to a fresh challenge.”

Thomson’s operation this time around was on his pyramidalis and adductor muscles in his groin area and he says he’s feeling great after it.

The former Ton man thanked the club’s medical staff, and admits he was relieved to finally see the end of his two-year spell playing through the pain barrier.

He added: “I feel good about everything after the operation. I felt the whole time I was going around in circles.

“The medical staff at Morton were brilliant with me, Alyson [Fielding, club physio] tried to do everything for me and tried to get a resolution for me to try and find out what was wrong with me.

“I had the hernia operation last summer and that never fixed anything, I had two injections which never really helped, and it was really through her pushing things and trying to get me to see other people I eventually got a proper diagnosis, and that injury spell behind me.

“I know it seems from my time at Morton I’m injury prone but the season before that at Dumbarton I never missed a game.

“It’s just unfortunate the way things have worked out and it’s not the way I expected things to work out with Morton, but it’s one of these things you need to learn from.”