Tony Mowbray: I'm bouncing full of energy and strength to go at West Brom

Mowbray received the all-clear to return to work last week after a recovery from bowel cancer - and revealed he brought forward his scan results from a six-day wait to 24 hours because of his determination to make a come back.

The 61-year-old detailed the dark days of his diagnosis and recovery, including not having the strength to stand, vomiting upon the smell of any food and dealing with the aftermath of the operation on his bowel, including the use stoma bag.

Asked on the impact of his illness, a defiant Mowbray said: "As a person, it's probably given me strength. It's given me an ability to look at myself. Lots of days where I need the support of my family. I do remember sitting in a hospital bed, feeling pretty ill.

"My kids having tears in their eyes, really, and realised that it was a club very close to this one, across the city. I needed to phone the CEO and say I'm not coming back when we planned that I would come back. Because I knew it was a longer journey. It's tough.

"I've spent a lot of time in a hospital in Manchester, seeing some unbelievably sick people, with bandanas on their head, very fragile, very frail. I know the feeling of lack of energy. Your body just empties of energy. It's hard to walk, never mind.

"To stand up, it was a chore to stand up. Days when I had to sit down in the shower, hopefully that's not too personal, but just the lack of energy. I'm trying to get to where I am today, bouncing, full of energy. I can feel it coming out of me."

Mowbray will take charge of Albion for the first time of his second spell tonight - away at his beloved Middlesbrough, where his family live and the club he captained and managed.

It is a far-cry from the severity of his ill-health only a few months ago, where he was stuck in hospital beds, receiving intense chemotherapy and dealing with a stoma bag, which wife Amber had to change.

Mowbray has since had to re-train himself to use the toilet as part of his recovery.

"Even the journey I had of going through the chemotherapy, which you get through, you have to get through it, and it's tough," added the Baggies boss. 

"But then I had a stoma bag, and for the thousands or millions of people who do have stoma bags, they'll know what I'm talking about.

"When I had a stoma reversal, I don't know whether people understand what a stoma bag is. Basically when you have your bowel dealt with, they disconnect it from where your bodily waste goes out, and it all goes into a bag.

"When you reverse it, your bowel hasn't been working for nine months, and it's like an organism that you need to train again. So if you can picture a number of pelvic floor strengthening exercises, stomach exercises I've done over the last few months to try and gain control again of my bowel so that I can tense up.

"If I need to sit here and not go to the toilet, I can do it for a couple of hours, no problem. Like you can do, always rushing off the toilet, every first urge.

"So I've got control again. I feel good. It's really interesting. I'm on a low-fibre diet, and I'm asking the doctors, so I'm eating no fruit, I'm eating no green vegetables."

He added: "What about the saying a fibre diet keeps the doctor away? It's really... And yet they're telling me that worse than human beings, the carnivores, they eat meat, and if you eat enough red meat, you get enough vitamins and you get enough stuff in your body. Lots of questions run through my mind because I'm an inquisitive person.

"Do I need to take supplements? What do I need so that I've got energy, and yet I'm bursting with energy at the moment, and I'm taking no supplements, and I'm not eating any fruit, I'm not eating any vegetables, and yet I feel full of energy.

"I look forward to every day. It's been really exciting walking back through the doors here at the Albion, at the training centre."