Just my luck.
To feed the millions who miss their football, the BBC filled an hour of airtime with Match of the Day highlights from three classic FA Cup quarter-finals at the weekend.
And the very first one they chose? Leicester losing at home to Wycombe in 2001, when the injury-time winner was scored by Roy Essandoh, a striker who had answered the Chairboys’ appeal for fit and eligible forwards on Teletext.
There is a story behind my curtailed involvement in that game, and most of the people who were ribbing me about the result after watching the programme on Saturday don’t know the reality.
So I’ll let you, and them, in on the secret.
(Image: Reuters)
(Image: Reuters)
I was substituted at half-time, but it wasn’t because of a poor challenge from Wycombe’s Steve Brown that wiped me out – although it didn’t help.
The day before the game, in training, I had gone up for a header and heard a crack in my knee when I landed.
Although there was no swelling, which is usually a bad sign, I went to see the physio to get it checked over.
After going through the checklist of normal tests, he said there was nothing obviously wrong. I went home, had a seaweed bath, took a few painkillers and passed a fitness test the following morning.
When the quarter-final draw was made, I must admit I was in the pub with three or four of the Leicester players – and we cheered when we came out of the hat with the lowest-ranked team left in the competition by a long chalk.
I guess the moral of the tale is that you should never take anything for granted in football.
(Image: Allsport)
After manager Peter Taylor’s team talk, when the pre-match buzzer sounded in the dressing room, summoning players to line up in the tunnel at about 2.53pm, I went to stand up and felt my knee lock.
For about 30 seconds, I was shouting, “ Gaffer, I can’t move – I can’t stand up!”
After some running repairs, I was able to unlock my knee, and I was desperate to play because it was a quarter-final, but my knee was still sore.
I didn’t have my best game, although I nearly scored with a glancing header, and that tackle by Brown certainly didn’t help my mobility.
I spent most of the second half getting changed and feeling a bit sorry for myself, and when I came out of the dressing room, the first thing I saw was Wycombe manager Lawrie Sanchez – who had been sent from the dugout by referee Steve Bennett – celebrating animatedly.
He had been following the last few minutes on a monitor in the tunnel in his brown overcoat, which was still soaked by the heavy showers over Filbert Street.
While Sanchez was screaming at the monitor in delight, I was in tears because I thought my season was over.
Miraculously, despite scans revealing a 50 per cent bucket-handle tear in my meniscus, I had an operation on my knee – and I was playing again, just NINE days later, against Derby in the Premier League.
