Ryan Scully could be forgiven for thinking that if he didn’t have bad luck, he would have no luck at all.

The Partick Thistle goalkeeper has long played understudy to regular number one Tomas Cerny, but with the Czech stopper struggling with a foot injury at the beginning of last season, Scully was seizing his opportunity to impress.

That was until a fateful night in Dundee, when an accidental collision with Abdul Osman left him with a dislocated shoulder.

Undeterred, he fought his way through the long months of rehabilitation, but then his conscientiousness backfired on him.

A few days before returning to full training, he decided to do a bit of extra work with the under 20s, and duly fractured his foot.

Now injury-free and fighting fit once more, Scully has returned to pre-season training with a hunger to make up for lost time, and begin the challenge for the Thistle gloves all over again.

“It was just a bit of a nightmare last year,” Scully said.

“I was feeling positive, got in the team and was finding a bit of consistency too, then I got the injury.

“I was on the way back and I thought that I’d do a bit extra with the 20s, but then I got a stamp on the foot. It was sore at the time, but I never thought too much about it until about a week later when it was still sore and I went for a scan.

“It turned out it was a fracture and it just summed up the season for me. I walked in and there was a big boot there waiting for me, and I just thought ‘Jesus, here we go.’

“You just have to laugh sometimes or you would start greeting. It was just frustrating at the time having worked so hard to get back.

“It was really disappointing because getting that run, I would have loved the chance to have seen the season out. I just have to take the positives from my performances when I was playing, and try to replicate that this season.

“I have to keep my head down, work as hard as I can to get back to that level and get back into the team.”

Scully admits that he felt a little detached from the top-six celebrations last season having spent so long out of the squad environment during his recovery.

His gym program allowed him to reconnect with a couple of other Thistle players who have been out long term though, and their plight helped to put his own struggles into perspective.

“I spent a lot of time with Stuart Bannigan and Gary Fraser in the gym, and you feel even worse for them with how long they have been out.

“Obviously, mine was a bad one, but they’ve been out for a year or more, so you can’t imagine what that has been like for them.

“Fingers crossed, Banzo has started training and he is looking good, and Gaz has had his operation again at the end of last season and he seems to be recovering well.

“It would be like having two new signings having them back.”

Scully is entering the final year of his contract at the club, and he knows that he has to get on the pitch to prove he deserves another deal.

“I had a talk with the gaffer at the end of last season just to see what I wanted to do, and whether we would look at loan moves or anything like that,” he said.

“There were talks about it, but nothing really happened, so my focus is all on Thistle and trying to push Tomas. The chances I got, I just didn’t feel as if it was the right time for me to be doing that yet.

“My full focus now is getting pre-season done, get as fit as I can, get minutes on the pitch and aim for that number one spot.”