'I heard it snap': Canberra United keeper Keeley Richards bounces back for A-League Women finals bid

The Canberra United goalkeeper was locked in a routine one-on-one drill at training in December when her hand was stepped on. She heard the noise but shrugged off the pain.

Richards had finally forced her way into Njegosh Popovich's starting side and refused to believe the possibility her A-League campaign was about to go up in smoke.

"I heard it snap, I heard a noise and thought 'surely not'," Richards said, opening up on the injury ahead of her return against Adelaide United at McKellar Park on Saturday.

"I got up and kept trying to play. I took the glove off, and as a keeper the first thing you do is check your fingers. I thought 'they look alright', so I put the glove back on and kept going.

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"I got to the end of the drill and thought 'maybe I'll go to the physio, just to see'. 'Jules' [Julian Russell-Jones] took one look at it, pressed down on one part of my hand and it gave way. From there it was off to the emergency room.

"When it initially happened I just thought 'there's no way'. I ended up going into ER and said I've broken my hand, and they asked if I was sure. I said 'I'm pretty sure'.

"We were looking at the x-ray and I could see that was broken, and Grace Maher was with me, and she said 'yeah, that's broken'. We figured it out pretty quickly."

So Richards was made to watch from afar as Chloe Lincoln returned to the starting team.

It seemed as though Canberra's season was slipping away when they slumped to consecutive 5-0 defeats in late January - only for a Michelle Heyman-inspired revival to lift them back into finals contention.

Heyman has scored seven goals in her past seven games - and four in her past three - to lift Canberra to fifth on the ladder, just three points outside the top four.

All while Richards was working away in the background, first returning to training with a splint and now just minimal strapping, and she has vowed to bolster Canberra's finals ambitions.

"If we're not here to play finals, what are we here for? We know it's going to be tough, but we now it's in our hands if we do everything possible," Richards said.

"Adelaide is always a tough game, you never quite know what they're going to bring. They're coming off a solid two-all draw. Hopefully we can keep the winning ways going.

"Obviously the girls are coming off a couple of really good wins and we want to keep that going now that we know we can do it.

"It's nice to be back doing what I came here to do."

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