James Keatings says Raith Rovers would have got a better player if they had put him through a proper fitness programme, but his Stark's Park career was over soon after his arrival.
And the former Hamilton Accies striker says the Kirkcaldy club didn't do their homework on a hip injury that has been troubling him for years.
Keatings, from Wishaw, has left the Championship club and is focusing on his career as a plasterer before deciding his next move in football.
Keatings, 30, who has won the Scottish Championship twice with both Hearts and Hibs, and the Scottish Cup with the Easter Road side, joined Raith at the start of the 2021-22 season after impressing at Inverness, but says they refused to put him on a training programme that he had been on at previous clubs.
A surgeon had told Keatings he couldn't take part in every pre-season training session, but Rovers decided otherwise.
A loan spell at Montrose was terminated in March, with the player himself admitting he couldn't get fit.
He told Football Scotland : "At Inverness for two years, and at Hamilton, I only trained three times a week after having the operation on my hip.
"It was the surgeon's programme. I needed to be managed going forward. Dundee United managed me to get me fully fit, I went to Hamilton and was managed fine and was playing, went to Inverness, and proved there that training three times a week worked.
"Raith were desperate to sign me. I went there and they had no clue. They hadn't dug into anything to do with previous injuries.
"I went in for pre-season, and after the first couple of days I had to get treatment on my hip every day, no matter what.
"The physio had a word with the manager, saying 'we need to watch what we're doing workload wise, he's different from the rest of the boys'.
"John's got his ways and he wants his boys to train every single day. That wasn't something I could do, but I did do it.
"The effects of me doing that was you were never going to get me 100 per cent. Come a Saturday I was always going to be tight, struggling to move, because of the way the hip seizes up with that workload.
"After numerous conversations with the manager he wouldn't adapt my training to get the best out of me.
"To be honest it was just disappointing for me. I knew after the first couple of weeks I was never going to get a chance at Raith and that was it."
Keatings added: "I was in agony, struggling to walk. One day my missus had to put my socks on because of how tight the hip was.
"I got an injection as well just after the third week. The physio had to send me for an injection to try and get it to calm down.
"That was basically the end of my Raith career before it had even started. I just tried to push it too much.
"If they'd given me the programme they'd have got the best out of me and got the player they signed.
"They knew the player they were getting but they were that desperate for me to sign they didn't do their background checks."
The former Celtic youth player is now branching out on his own with a plastering business.
"Since I left Raith I've put that first and foremost," he said.
"I started the plastering a good while back. I saw my mate's dad plastering and how it's done, and the PFA had a course on it, so I went and did that. It was brilliant to get you started.
"After that I went out with my mate's dad and just kept building it up until the stage that I was confident enough to do my own jobs and take it from there.
"He kept me right and now I'm doing my own work, and enjoying it, to be fair."
Part-time football would be on the horizon for Keatings, due to work commitments, and he said: "I've had a few offers. A few clubs have contacted me in the last few months.
"It's still a possibility I'll play next season, but I'm putting things away from football first.
"There will come a time in the next few weeks where I make a decision on whether I'll come back next season, or call it a day."
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