At the British Football Club, football has always been about more than just the game itself. It’s about people, history, community, and the stories that connect generations through a shared love of football.

We recently came across this wonderfully written piece through members of the wider football community, and it immediately resonated with us. It captures something deeply human within the game — the kind of story that deserves to be shared, remembered, and appreciated.

As supporters of Roy Thomas, we are proud to share this article with our community and hope others enjoy reading it as much as we did.

What does a bank holiday, a football pitch, and a floppy foot, have to do with what I learned about direction when I lost the ability to walk?

My plan was simple, show up, support the lads, watch from the touchline, record and maybe hand out some orange slices.  Coming out of retirement to play football was not part of it.  A slipped disc many years ago cut short my football career, and the sporadic twinges of pain a reminder of what football once took from me.

We were gathered for an annual tournament for our teams manager, who had passed a few years before.  He was like a big brother, uncle and father to many of us young energetic misfits.  And the annual tournament was a great opportunity for us (older misfits) to get together and ensure his legacy lives on.

It was the May bank holiday, and the sun was out. Several players were late, which was actually typical of them; some things in life never change.  But, my body was feeling great with no pain, full of energy and enthusiasm.  Maybe this feeling of aliveness came from being in the open air surrounded by team mates.  It had been a long winter.

Before I had thought it through properly, I was warming up, stretching and starting at right back.  The first seven minutes was like nothing had changed for me, and I was hoping a scout from Arsenal was on the sidelines watching, about to give me a (very very) late call up.  I started well, a few link-up balls, some one-twos with the centre mids, a couple of overlapping runs that surprised even me. We dominated that opening spell. It felt, briefly and brilliantly, like nothing had ever changed.  I was going to get on the score sheet, I knew it, and that feeling is difficult to communicate, but if you felt like this before, you’ll know what I mean.

The next few items happened in seconds, but I saw and still see it in slow motion.  One of the ringers on the team came sliding in, and caught me on my standing leg.  Why are you sliding in?  It’s not the UCL final, and I am a veteran. I looked down, at the challenge and saw my foot facing the wrong way.  Literally.

What I Did in the Moment

I did not scream, I simply put myself on the floor,carefully, and told the challenger to get an ambulance.  Then I focused on breathing. Deep, slow, controlled. I looked at the clouds, then looked at my toes and asked them to move.  When they twitched, I exhaled, not quite relief but was close enough. Then went back to inspecting the shape of the clouds, and taking deep breathes again.  I knew it was bad.

If you have ever seen a Daffy Duck cartoon, beak slapped clean round to the back of his head: that was my foot. I did not realise at the time, but the paramedics and ambulance took an hour to arrive.

The Reality

I will always be grateful for the paramedic: he got my foot pointing forward again. The sound it made as he twisted my leg was something like my old Ford Orion grinding into the wrong gear, and it cut through even the pain-relieving inhaler he had given me. (Maybe that was psychosomatic).

At the hospital, the first X-ray told more of the story. Broken fibula, fractured tibia, dislocated ankle joint and torn syndesmotic ligaments, the connective tissue that holds the fibula and tibia together.  The ankle had to be manipulated back into position, but it was not quite right.  After the typical waiting times in the hospital, they tried again to get it in the right place. More crunching of bones, more X-rays, more waiting. It still was not correct; the ankle remained misaligned, which explained the level of pain I was in. They tried a third time for the day. More pain, more medication.

It worked, and they sent me home in a half cast with surgery plans pending. That night, the dehydration and constipation from the pain medication caught up with me. My blood pressure dropped critically low. I blacked out and was blue-lighted back to the hospital. After several more hours, numerous tests, intravenous rehydration and pain relief, they sent me home again at 4am.

At 7am the hospital called, and told me that after re-examining the X-rays, my ankle was still misaligned. I needed to go back in to have it reset once more. Four dislocation and resetting attempts in two days, a close call with low blood pressure, and a couple of operations still ahead.

The Road From Here

The practical commitment is straightforward, follow the medical guidance without negotiation and protect sleep and nutrition as seriously as any performance programme, but the road back is not only physiological.

I keeping reminding myself to stop asking why this happened, thats not helpful.  Instead, I’ve reduced these thoughts to these three areas.

01 My Response

I didn’t choose to have my beak slapped off,  but I can still choose. Everything is about choice,  how I respond to this injury, the expected discomfort, and treatment I am lucky enough to receive.  Thats in my control.

02 My Constraint as an Opportunity

I cannot run, but I can think. I cannot move the way I previously did but I can move somethings forward. The physical constraints and lack of mobility is, if I choose to see it that way, an opportunity. An opportunity to slow down and focus on the things that have been waiting on my attention: the book that needs finishing, and the projects that kept getting pushed aside by the pace of everything else. The ankle may stop me running (right now), but everything else is still in play.

03.Take Responsibility

The external world does not get to write the next chapter of my story unless I hand it the pen. It’s my responsibility to do what matters, and it’ll be mental before it is physical. I need to protect that first, and the rest will follow when the body is ready.

A Final Word, To Myself And To Anyone Reading

I came out of football retirement for seven minutes on a bank holiday and ended up with my foot facing the wrong direction. The obvious reading of that story is that it was a mistake. Perhaps it was. But the other reading, the one I am choosing, is that those seven minutes reminded me who I still am.

Someone who warms up, who overlaps and who plays, even when the sensible choice would be to watch.  There will be harder days ahead in this recovery, days when the progress is invisible and the frustration is not.  I am not pretending otherwise.

The ankle will be fixed, leg and ligaments bolted, plated, and rehabilitated until it holds again. The recovery will be measured in weeks and months, not days. And somewhere on the other side of it, I will come back to this post and remember what it felt like to look at the clouds and breathe, and to understand, from the ground up, that my circumstances do not define me.  They never did, that was always the point.

This will also be a good reminder that my response to disruption is the first thing that belongs to me, even when everything else is spinning.

Roy Thomas