I can't remember the exact date. It was too long ago, and I was too young. It was an innocuous injury anyway, right? Nothing worth remembering. Just a knock, a blip on the season. I'd gone down heavily but there'd been no contact. At first glance it didn't look too bad.
It was 1993, I was 14 and it was cold. At a guess I'd put it at February. We'd had a few matches cancelled in January and from memory the pitch, away from home and somewhere in Staffordshire, was still frosted when we kicked off. I was in pretty good form at the time, having scored something like 8 goals in 11 games prior to that day. That would qualify as better than "pretty good" in the analysis of most striker's statistics but I'd ended the previous season with 34 from 13 matches so the move up in age groups had impeded the goal ratio a touch.
I loved scoring goals, and I'd always been drawn to goalscorers when watching football on television. I enjoyed flair players - Baggio, Gascoigne, Hagi, Diego Armando Maradona - but the ones who really captured my imagination were the ones who scored goals. Steve Bull, limited but lethal; Alan McInally, powerful and instinctive; Toto Scillaci, the proverbial fox in the box; and Emilio Butragueño, the vulture. There were others - Lineker, Klinsmann, Völler, the list could go on. I'd certainly never dare to think I might have reached the standard of some of these guys but in my head, aged 14 and wearing my first pair of adidas football boots, that's what I aspired to be.
During the long and painful limp back to the changing rooms, and it felt like miles, I couldn't possibly have imagined that my road to recovery would have no end in sight until 2011. I'd have thought you were mad to have even suggested it.
But thirteen months after the initial injury, at the beginning of March 1994 and just a few weeks before my beloved Aston Villa were due to play the mighty Manchester United at Wembley, I was told I'd never play competitively again. Never. At 14 years of age. That was it.
I'd never really thought I was going to be picked up by Villa, work my way through the ranks and break into the first team before scoring in front of the Holte End on my début. Furthermore I hadn't entertained the idea of eventually being picked for England, rifling home an injury time equaliser from a drilled John Barnes cross and successfully converting my penalty in the subsequent shootout, enabling me to stand next to Tony Adams as he hoisted the trophy aloft.
Who am I kidding? Of course I had! Apart from maybe the part about England winning a trophy on penalties against the Germans. Somebody would've missed theirs before I even got the chance to take mine, and that's assuming an England team containing the likes of Geoff Thomas and Carlton Palmer would even have qualified for a finals, let alone go all the way.
But in March 1994 I had to let go of those dreams, give up the dressing room camaraderie and the smell of spirit liniment and resign myself to a life not just devoid of football but sport as a whole. In February of 2011, though, an orthopaedic surgeon by the name of Adam Hoad-Reddick gave me new hope. A super-specialist in lower limb injuries with an office full of shirts signed by elite athletes whose career he has extended or saved, Mr Hoad-Reddick believes he can fix what has been wrong for so many years and get me back onto a football pitch. It won't be John Barnes crossing the ball, and it won't be the final of an international tournament, but rifling a football into the back of a net is the dream I can reignite and will be the sharp focus in my mind as I rehabilitate from my planned surgery on September 5th.
This blog will tell my story around how the injury occurred, the aftermath of misdiagnosis, incorrect treatment and the effect it had on myself and those around me, and the impact it's had on my broader life both negatively (loss of confidence and general health in equal measures) and positively (my desire to kit out athletes in the best product possible and the life/career that has brought me).
As my operation gets closer (it's just five weeks away now) I'll go through how I feel and what my hopes and expectations are; and post-operation I'll document my rehabilitation through every stage from emerging out of the anaesthetic chrysalis to spreading my wings onto a pitch for the first time in nearly twenty years and eventually, hopefully, surely scoring that goal that I've been so desperate to score for so, so many years.
I hope you'll join me on the journey. It'll make the Road to Wembley seem like a stroll in the park.
