GEORGE WALKER MEMORIAL TROPHY 2005

TUESDAY 3rd MAY 2005

CLARENCE PARK - KICK OFF 7.30 pm

In aid of the neurotrauma educational fund

Background to this years charity appeal

A promising footballer from St Albans who came close to death after a fall, is back playing soccer again.

Jake Attwood, aged 20, whose family live in Sandridge Road, has been declared match fit and the local youth team are playing a game to raise money for the procedures that saved him.

Jake had been a regular at St Albans City and City Youth Football Club and was expecting a trial with Leeds United this summer before he fell and fractured his skull.
He had been invited to train in Leeds and had moved to the city to stay with friends while he played football and took on a part-time job.
But on February 13 Jake fell down some stairs and had to undergo a five-hour operation to remove a massive build-up of blood between his skull and brain.


Within two days of the operation he was up showering and shaving himself which amazed the surgeons who had seen people with similar injuries take up to six months to recover.

Jake has now been given the all-clear after a final scan on Monday and can get back to the sport he loves.

His father and chairman of City Youth, Clive Attwood, said: "If I know Jake he won't let something like this stop him. He will make the effort to play again which he is capable of doing."

He said that Jake's recovery had been marvellous and he now wanted to do everything he could to raise awareness about such types of injury.

His surgeon at Leeds Hospital said it was Jake's swift transfer to the specialist hospital that almost certainly saved him. When consultant neurosurgeon Jake Timothy heard that the football club had chosen to adopt brain injury research as their cause for the annual charity match, he asked that the money be donated to a symposium he was planning to discuss the safe transfer of brain-injury patients.

In a letter to Mr Attwood he said: "I personally believe that this is a practical solution to improving patients' lives'. Of course there is a lot of research going into brain injury and although I am also involved with this, it may take many years for us to discover 'cures' for brain injury. It's the practical aspects which tend to be ignored."

That is a view that Mr Attwood also shares after he was told that had Jake had his accident in St Albans he would not be alive now.

The George Walker Memorial Trophy, in memory of a past St Albans City chairman, is being played between St Albans City Youth Under Twelve's West v Under Twelve's South at Clarence Park at 7.30pm on Saturday, May 3. Admission is £2 for adults but under-12s get in free. There will also be a raffle to raise extra funds.