The Celtic Way’s Tony Haggerty recently spoke exclusively to former Hoops winger Derk Boerrigter.

A controversial figure while at Parkhead, the Dutchman’s time at the club was marred by major injury issues, quarrels with club staff and allegations of diving.

During part one of the wide-ranging conversation, which you can read here, Boerrigter discusses the moment he knew his time at Celtic was up, being blocked from joining now Manchester United boss Erik ten Hag back in his homeland and his lingering indignation at the SFA’s decision to ban him for simulation.

In part two, the now 36-year-old goes in-depth on the injury issues which plagued his spell at Celtic as well as his early clashes with medical staff, finding out he was being targeted by an opposition manager and his entrepreneurial life after football.

Derk Boerrigter was cruelly christened 'sicknote' by sections of the Ajax supporters when he turned out for the Dutch club. Ironically, it was also injuries that put paid to his Celtic career.

He never quite managed to live that perception down when he signed for the Hoops under Neil Lennon for £3million in the summer of 2013.

The Dutchman was a high-profile purchase brought in to try to offset the departures of popular duo Victor Wanyama and Gary Hooper.  Boerrigter had come with a pedigree after scoring for Ajax in the Champions League against Real Madrid in the Santiago Bernabeu.

He also arrived in Glasgow with an ankle injury. It was a problem that was to prove his very undoing at Celtic. According to Boerrigter that issue then led to knee and back problems and thus prevented him from showing his true worth to the club.

Indeed, he lasted just 39 minutes of his Parkhead debut – a 2-1 win over Ross County – after taking painkillers to mask the suffering that he endured from his bad ankle. He also contends that he would never have played in the game if not for the Hoops coaching staff’s insistence.

"I expected a lot more from my time at Celtic but the problem was that I came in with an injury,” Boerrigter told The Celtic Way. “I had pain in my ankle when I joined and I told the club's medical staff all about it. When I signed I also told the club I had not played in a fortnight or trained at Ajax due to the injury.

"Celtic told me to go out and train but I told them l couldn't do it. The club were adamant that I was fit enough to train. I was new and I didn't want to be called a sissy or have a bad reputation for being injured straight away.

"So I thought ‘I'm new here, I'm going to take some painkillers and I'm going to see how well I do in the training session’. It was a tough session. I couldn't stand and run on my foot and I couldn't kick a ball because of the pain in my ankle. I thought I would just give it my best and then a week later the first league game was scheduled.

“I kept on complaining about my ankle. They told me I was going to start next the next game. I remember saying to the club doctors ‘are you serious?’

“I was just in the door at Celtic and I was constantly complaining about my ankle, saying that I had a lot of pain in it and I couldn't even kick the ball properly, so I asked ‘what did you expect from me?’”

As it turned out, the Dutchman was running around on a broken ankle. What’s worse, subsequently Boerrigter was informed by a compatriot playing for the Staggies in that game that his dodgy ankle was deliberately targeted under the instructions of then County boss Derek Adams, who had learned of his injury issues.

"I started the Ross County game after taking some painkillers,” he said. “Around the 39-minute mark, I got another kick on my ankle from an opponent and was substituted. The funny thing is there were some Dutch guys playing for Ross County at the time – Darren Maatsen, Kevin Luckassen and Melvin De Leeuw – and I met them six months later in Glasgow and they told me that the Ross County team were aware that I had a bad ankle. Their manager instructed the right-back to hurt the winger and to go for his left ankle… and that is exactly what happened.

"Celtic were quite hard on me afterwards, they didn't let me go and see a doctor or anything. Eventually, I had to get my agents involved in order to get an ultrasound scan and when the results came back it turned out that I had a broken ankle; the bone structure had a big crack in it and that is what was causing the pain in my ankle.

“The worst part is that I kept on making it worse instead of making it better. So I was out for like six months after that. It was not the ideal start to my Celtic career – my injury problems and diagnosis could all have been handled and dealt with in a better way."

Boerrigter's injury curse was only just starting. He recovered from the ankle problems after half a year out but then contracted a knee injury due to putting extra weight on his left leg in compensating for the hurt right ankle. Another six months out lay in wait.

"After those six months walking around with a sore ankle I was finally back from that injury,” he explained. “I was walking differently as I had been putting more weight on my left leg so I ended up getting pain in my right knee. I had never had knee problems in my whole career and then, because of that troublesome ankle problem, I started getting injuries in other places.

"My right knee had inflammation underneath the kneecap and it was diagnosed that I needed more surgery to be done to take the pain away again. That was another setback which took six months to recover from.

Celtic Way:

"I just wasn't very lucky when I came to Celtic but these are things that not many people know. The supporters remember me as the guy who was always injured. I was never really injured in my whole career before – everything bad that happened injury-wise to me came after I signed for Celtic. It was all down to bad luck and receiving kicks on my ankle but I couldn't do anything about it.

"It was a combination of being unfortunate but also I feel if I would’ve had the right medical staff to deal with certain kinds of injuries then I could have been back out on the pitch a lot sooner – and if Celtic had just listened to me when I told them I had pains in my ankle after I signed, that I wasn't saying it for effect. That's the thing.

“I'm hard on myself because I know what I can do. I know how good a player I was but I wanted to be 100 per cent fit and I knew I wasn't. If I am running around at 60 per cent of my full capabilities then what can I do?

"It is what it is. I know I would have done a lot better at Celtic if I was fully fit. Sadly, I never got that chance to prove it."

It wasn't all bad news for Boerrigter in Glasgow. There were some fleeting good times and moments. He played 16 games and scored his one and only goal in a 3-1 victory against Aberdeen.

"I definitely remember the goal I scored,” he said. “One goal in 16 matches is not the best statistic for Celtic and it is nothing to write home about – and I think I played over 50 games for Ajax and I scored sixteen goals, so that's a much better ratio.”

Having played for two of European football's most renowned clubs – Ajax and Celtic – Boerrigter harbours no misgivings at how his football career panned out.

“I have no regrets, none whatsoever,” Boerrigter added. “Nobody can take away the fact that I played and scored in the Champions League for Ajax. I actually scored two goals in the Champions League – once against Real Madrid in the Santiago Bernabeu and the other one against Dinamo Zagreb.

"But things happen for a reason, I am quite philosophical about life. I can't do anything about it anymore. I can't turn back time. I enjoyed my time with Celtic, especially my time living there – I loved Scotland and I loved Glasgow, every minute of it.

“Life was good. I made some great friends there but I went to Scotland to play football and it just didn't work out on that side of things. That was the most important part missing from my time in Scotland.”

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It may have been missing then but the 36-year-old still kicks a ball about now. Most weekends he can be found playing at amateur level, where one of his team-mates is none other than former Netherlands and Chelsea defender Khalid Boulahrouz.

"I still turn out for a local amateur team on a Sunday,” he said. “Khalid is one of my team-mates and there are also some other former ex-professional football players in the team as well.

"We're all a little bit older and we play against younger boys but the funny thing is that we can all still play. We don't run as much anymore but it's good fun. The brain is still there and you don't lose the skills.

"In our last two matches, we won 7-0 and 10-0 and I think we played 18 games or something like that this season and we have scored more than 100 goals already. You never lose it!"

Having tried his luck on the field, Boerrigter is now keen to make it as an entrepreneur off it.

He has recently packed in a shoe business and entered into a new venture with his girlfriend involving ultrasounds as well as supplying supplements to pregnant women.

“I had no ambitions of becoming a football coach or a trainer,” he said. “I have an interest in many things right now and I am trying to become a really successful entrepreneur. I tried my luck with the shoe business and I learned a lot from it but it has now come to an end.

"I'm involved in another business involving ultrasound with my girlfriend as she is a midwife and an ultrasound specialist. We have her own ultrasound business in Holland and it works really well.

"We have also set up a new business which involves supplying food supplements for pregnant women. It is a totally new venture which we will be launching in May and, hopefully, that will be very successful."

What about Celtic? Does Boerrigter still keep tabs on the fortune of his old club?

"The funny thing is I still do,” he confirmed. “I have a lot of football on my TV here and I watch all the Celtic v Rangers games whenever they are on.

"There were some bad things that happened to me at Celtic but overall I had a really good time in Scotland and made some good friends and connections. Sometimes things just don't work out the way you want them."

Footballer, sicknote, entrepreneur... whatever way you remember him, welcome back to the weird, wonderful and colourful world of Derk Boerrigter.