Cleve Gibbon

On Thursday, 16th May, David Beckham retired from the beautiful game.  Unplanned, I joined him.  I was out playing 7-a-side football that Thursday, scored the first goal. A left-footed scorcher into the top-right hand corner, and was turning up field to collect a second.  Then smash, someone took me out.  Hard.  I heard a massive pop deep down in my left leg.  I turned around to give some young scally a right dressing down but no-one was there.  I tried to lift my left foot and it was like jelly.  Game over.

The next 24 hours were a blur.  Six hours in emergency.  Leg in cast overnight for eight hours.  Back to the fracture clinic only to have a consultant put his finger right through my ankle that a subsequent ultrasound confirmed to be a full 20mm gap.  Diagnosis, a full rupture of my left Achilles’ tendon.  Crap! Surgery four hours later and my leg back in cast for the next ten weeks.  Great! The doctors have confined me to barracks for at least the next six weeks, followed by four weeks with limited movement, and then a couple months of physio.  Back up walking in 4-5 months all in all. Bummer!

I’ve taken all that on board now.  But what’s more shocking than that news, is the first question that everyone asks me after hearing about all that, which is:

Damn Cleve, aren’t you going to be bored?

Hmmm, I thought. Bored? Really? No people. Not bored. In fact, hell no to boredom!  And here are three good reasons for this:

•     We have the Internet.
•     I have man cave with a 120Mb broadband connection (Thank you Virgin Media).
•     There are sooo many things to ‘catch up’ on.

So, with my gammy leg, a zero commute, I have sixteen hours a day to work, rest and play with.  That’s plenty for me.

Speak soon.

Cleve