Just over a year ago, Ruben Zadkovich felt like he was on top of the football world.Yesterday, he was on a Wollongong physiotherapist's table, dreaming of returning to the field.The Bulli junior is nearing his comeback after a complicated groin injury ruined his first season with English Championship outfit Derby County.Zadkovich returned home in April to treat the ailment, which flared while representing Australia at the Beijing Olympic Games in August last year.That was the setting of the greatest moment of the 23-year-old's career, as he scored the Olyroos' only goal of the campaign. That strike came just weeks after Zadkovich's Socceroos debut.After those heady highs, the ensuing 13 months have been packed with surgery, rehab, diagnosis, treatment, aborted comebacks and most frustratingly, precious little football.Zadkovich missed the last game in Beijing and made only a handful of starts for the Rams after being diagnosed with an adductor strain - an injury he expected would take six weeks to heal.Two operations and two short-lived comebacks later, Zadkovich is at the tailend of six months of treatment - including three hours a day of dry needling and agonising deep tissue massage, five times a week."I pretty much live here, I hate it. I just want to play," he said from the BaiMed Physiotherapy's Auburn St clinic."Six weeks has turned into a year. Ten games in a year ... it's shit."If you asked me during the Olympics how things were going, I would have said it's all looking good."It's a slippery slope."Zadkovich returns to the UK next Wednesday and has set himself a goal of playing by Christmas. With his two-year Derby deal expiring in June - and the Rams already deep into this season's campaign - that would leave the midfielder-cum-right back a tiny window to impress Rams boss Nigel Clough.Clough has not seen Zadkovich play in the flesh, as he took over from Paul Jewell in January - by that stage the former Sydney FC and Notts County player was already on the shelf."I need to be playing by then, if it's not right by Christmas, I will play even if it's at 90 per cent because I need to," Zadkovich said."It's a race against time.""When you're playing there's no better place in the world, nothing better."When you're not, there's nothing worse - you miss your family and friends and the best country in the world and you're watching your career slide away."Naturally, Zadkovich was full of thanks for the physios - Daniel Lawson and Michael Baines - who have overseen his recovery."They have been there for me, I have to put in three hours a day, which means they have to as well," Zadkovich said.