Tomorrow is World Cup Final day. Well not really, but in terms of my football career it's just as big. The operation is finally upon me. I'm strangely not feeling that scared at the moment which, for someone who avoided going to the dentist for over 10 years out of a fear of needles, is quite an odd thing. It's almost as thought fate has brought me to it and it's just the next logical step in trying to get this thing fixed. Positivity is going to be vital if I'm going to find my way back onto a football pitch and score that elusive goal so today is about being excited rather than scared.
I'm also helped by the fact I've been reading Paul Lake's autobiography "I'm Not Really Here". It's a powerful tale about a man with the footballing world at his feet (literally, not just in an imaginary parallel universe like me) who got a bad injury but one which, with the right diagnosis and correct treatment, should've been a blip rather than career-ending. Sound familiar? I wasn't expecting it to make me cry but some of the more poignant moments, especially the one where he has to tell his Mom that he can't play again, brought painful memories flooding back. If you haven't read it already I'd recommend that you do. It's quite the human story.
Paul now works as an ambassador for Manchester City, the club he supported as a child and went on to captain before his injury (ironically against Villa). Prior to that, and in the immediate aftermath of the premature end to his career, he studied and worked as a physiotherapist having been inspired by his own experiences on the treatment table. Strangely, or not, that was my first port of call too. I was doing ok in science at school and Biology was my favourite of the three so it seemed like a logical step. Sadly, at Bishop Vesey's Grammar School, doing "ok" at science wasn't good enough to allow me to study Biology at A-level. I wasn't driven enough towards physiotherapy to prompt me to change school (although I did try it) so I needed to pick a subject at which I was better than "ok".
CDT, or Craft, Design and Technology to use its full title, was a subject I could label myself good at, and one which I really enjoyed. I'd never made the link between taking a bottle of Tipp-Ex to copies of Roy of the Rovers as a kid before drawing on my own kit designs and the prospect of a career as a designer. I was lucky to have the mentorship of three great people at school - Bob Metcalfe, Dawn Webster and Jon Holden encouraged and cajoled me towards following design at University, the latter two in particular spending vast amounts of time helping me to create a portfolio and develop my A-level projects to a high enough standard that I'd actually pass. A public thanks for that...
At school I was designing boats and motorbike security devices so I'm not quite sure how I wound up studying fashion in Manchester. Actually, that's a lie. I chose fashion because I wanted to meet girls and Manchester because I liked the music scene up there. As good reasons as any when you're 18, lets be honest!
Even in the formative stages of my fashion degree I hadn't realised that people could really make a living designing football kits. It didn't really occur to me that it was an option at all until we were briefed on a sportswear project and I began to really flourish at what I was doing. Four years of support and tutelage from Delma Barlow (who completely understood how to get the best out of me), and latterly seeing an inspirational talk by her husband Vic, and I was all set to embark on my life creating clothes rather than just spending my student loans on them. Another public thanks is deserved here too.
But football was never going to be far from the action, it seems, and within weeks of starting work designing sportslifestyle product at Puma in Surrey I was heading over to HQ in Germany for the next stage of my career, focused entirely on designing football kit and trainingwear. It was a dream come true and I was completely driven and inspired by my experiences with injury. If I couldn't play football myself I could at least design products that would make it easier, more pleasant and even enhance the performance of those who could. Those who really HAD made it to the top as well as those who played every Sunday morning just out of a love for the beautiful game.
I'll never forget the first time I saw VfB Stuttgart run out into a Bundesliga game wearing my design. It was like a virtual reality experience. But these experiences kept coming and coming - being a guest of UEFA at a Champions League final, presenting a Bulgaria kit concept to Hristo Stoichkov and working with one of my personal design icons Neil Barrett. I thought things had reached their zenith when I had the opportunity to spend an hour in the company of Pelé, being trailed by a camera crew as I ran him through Puma's offering for the 2006 World Cup. I won't lie, I shed a tear shortly after my time with him had ended. After everything I'd been through with regards to football I'd still achieved a dream and met the greatest footballer of all time.
Little was I to know then that a little over twelve months later on 9th July 2006 at the Olympiastadion in Berlin, even though I wasn't there in person, I'd get as close as I possibly could to achieving the dream outlined in the first post of this blog. Fabio Grosso replaced me in slamming home the decisive shootout penalty to win the World Cup, and it was for Italy rather than England, but he was wearing the kit that I'd designed as he became a national hero -
As Fabio Cannavaro lifted the trophy I had a massive lump in my throat -
I'd never in a million years have got so close to that magical moment as a player, but as a result of having lost the opportunity to play I'd followed a completely different path in life and had somehow managed to be a part of football history. And it still feels weird and embarrassing, arrogant even, typing that here. My role in Italy's victory was entirely fortuitous, a by-product of working for the right company at the right time. Being privileged to have the chance to design that kit owes a huge amount to luck, the right place at the right time. But design it I did (with lots of help from Bryony Coates and Sam Stephenson plus several others - cheers guys) and the psychological impact on me was massive. It closed a chapter in my life. It felt like fate had taken me to that moment and my injury was the catalyst.
So perhaps that's why, right now, I'm not nervous ahead of my own World Cup Final. It's just another part of the story, another twist in the tale. It's been such a ludicrous and surreal journey so far that something as mundane as an operation is a fairly straight forward addition to the list of anecdotes. Will it work? Will I play football again? Will I strangely miss the injury, like a hostage released by my surgeon Adam Hoad-Reddick from years of captivity? AIK Stockholm Syndrome...
There's only one way to find out, though, and find out I will. I'm sure I'll be nervous tomorrow, or maybe even tonight, but if/when I am I'll try to suspend my disbelief and - as I have on so many of the weird and wonderful moments that can somehow be traced back to the occurrence of that fractured right ischial tuberosity - view it in the words of the title to Paul Lake's incredible book. I'll just be thinking "I'm Not Really Here".
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