Footballer Lockyer reunited with medics who saved his life

Football player Lockyer was reunited with the life-saving medical professionals.

Tom Lockyer, a former football player for Wales, has been reunited with the medical personnel who saved his life after he went into cardiac arrest while playing.

Additionally, he was on duty at Wembley Stadium seven months prior to Tom’s collapse during the Championship play-off final due to a cardiac condition, and he immediately recognised the seriousness of the situation. We asked you questions, but you weren’t answering. Fortunately, we were able to move swiftly because everyone arrived as a team,” he said to Lockyer. Lockyer was informed for the first time that away team medics routinely inform their home counterparts of any player concerns. As a result, the Bournemouth medical staff suspected a cardiac issue quite quickly.

The 16-cap Wales player recalls hearing conversations but being unable to react when he woke up following the defibrillator. “I couldn’t speak, I couldn’t move,” he said. ‘I’m good,’ I thought, but nothing came out. “I remember in that moment thinking ‘I could be dying here’, which is obviously not a nice feeling to have.” He recalls wanting to stand up so that everyone, including his father and his girlfriend, who was seven months pregnant, would know he was okay.

“It wasn’t until we carried you off that we realised how quiet the 11,000 fans were,” Mr. Fernee recounted. It dawned on me then that everyone was present. Ms Clarke continued: “You just crack on and get your head down and ultimately it was Tom in front of us, he’s still a patient and we’ve got to ignore everyone else around us and we just need to give him the life-saving care that he required at the time.”

One week before he was supposed to play again for the first time since collapsing, Cardiff-born Lockyer, who now has a tiny defibrillator implanted in his chest in case he has another cardiac arrest, injured his ankle ligaments. “After what happened, it was quite hard mentally, because for 20 years I had been Tom Lockyer the footballer, and that was snatched away from me overnight,” he says on BBC Breakfast, acknowledging that his life has altered. “I didn’t really know what to do with myself, who I really was, it was a bit of an identity crisis.”

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