We must all learn from Muamba

Much of the football news over the last couple of weeks has been dominated by the incident involving Fabrice Muamba of Bolton Wanderers. Thankfully, highly qualified medics were on hand to save his life and steer him towards what we all hope will be a full recovery.

Such highly qualified medics are not to hand at the Sunday venues and G-d forbid if a player was unfortunate to have a similar occurrence the outcome may not be so successful.

I can recall two such instances in the league when Ivor Benveniste of Oakwood had a cardiac arrest on the pitch and sadly passed away. Also, at a match that I attended, a player swallowed his tongue and went into spasm. He turned blue and all that could be done was to place him in the recovery position and wait for the ‘fit’ to pass. I had only just finished a first aid course with Gary Lewin, the Arsenal and England physio, so I had some idea as to what should be done but shamefully the one point we were taught, that is not to panic, passed me over to my regret. Thankfully the player, Benjy Wreshner, made a full recovery, and we laugh about it now. The incident was featured in Esther Rantzen ‘That’s Life’ and one of the reporters ‘mocked’ the incident and made light of it.

The reason for my going into these two incidents is to highlight the fact that we should have at least one person at every game that has some idea as to how to handle such a situation, and in fact Maccabi GB are holding two courses for this purpose. I would ask you to consider this very seriously and if you need further details please let me know.