As he nears his comeback following a second cruciate knee injury in 18 months, Hull City's Jimmy Bullard has revealed that his new knee was made from a dead man's donated knee ligament!

Bullard, 30, damaged his cruciate knee ligament just 37 minutes into his Hull City debut, following his £5 million move from Fulham, against West Ham in January.Cruelly, it was a repeat of the injury he sustained in September 2006.

The injury frequently ends footballers' careers, so for Bullard to be readying his second comeback from such a setback is remarkable, and all the more so when you consider that his reasonably quick return is down to a ligament donation.

The midfielder immediately returned to US knee specialist Richard Steadman, who had treated his first injury, and the American revealed that this time he took the novel approach of using a donation.

"The first time he came to me his knee had gone 90 degrees in the wrong direction. The question was if he could come back from such a bad injury and he proved he could," he told the News of the World.

"This time we made a new ligament and it was very successful. We took a donated ligament from a dead male."

Bullard, who made a scoring return to football during a Reserve match against Bolton Wanderers last week, and is targeting a first team return later this month, explained that his knee was well on its way to recovery as soon as he came round from the operation.

"I come round and the dead man's ligament is in there. Steady has finished. I wake up slowly and my leg is already in a machine, bending. I wake up and there I was, moving my knee and from there the rehab was off."