Keeping the dream alive

Apr 6 2008 by Neil Farrington, Sunday Sun

England hopefuls

LEE CURRY and team-mate Andy Reay have been warned they face heartbreak in their bid to play in this summer’s Deaf World Cup.

But the duo — colleagues at Whitley Bay Deaf FC and at Rutherford AFC — have not harmed their longer-term hopes of playing for the England Deaf team by missing last month’s World Cup trials.

Lee and Andy’s decision to play for Gateshead-based Rutherford rather than attend the trials has been met with sympathy by the Football Association, who have hailed the work the club is doing in the community.

Little wonder Rutherford’s director of football and first-team manager, Steve Coxon, is a proud man. He said: “Lee has done very well, playing every week for the reserve team, and he’s got a great opportunity of winning the Player of the Year award.

“The other lads absolutely adore him. To overcome so many obstacles defies nature, really. He’s amazing.

“And Andy Reay is playing in the first team as a striker and is a massive talent. But the really great thing is the level of awareness and acceptance of deafness among the other lads.

“We don’t have a disabled team. We just have disabled players in our mainstream teams — and in on merit — which is fantastic in itself.”

That’s a sentiment shared by the Football Association, who have just rewarded Rutherford for their “good football development and integration work” with a £1m grant to build new facilities at their ground near Lobley Hill, Gateshead.

Andy Pover, the FA’s regional facilities manager in the North, also extended an olive branch to Curry and Reay.

He said: “Lee and Andy missed the trials and the opportunity to play in the Championships in the Summer.

“But we will have scouts watching games for players that have the potential to make the step from league football to national level and so they have not missed out from playing for England in the future.”

Reliving nightmare

WHEN doctors warned Lee Curry’s parents, Janet and Les, to fear the worst, they had already pulled him from “the jaws of death”.

Soon after arriving at Shotley Bridge Hospital, County Durham, Janet was told Lee might not survive the night. The reality was even more frightening.

“I’m not sure his family realised just how bad Lee was in the very first hour I arrived to treat him,” recalled consultant paediatrician Dr Nigel Speight, one of several medical “heroes” still hailed by Janet, almost 21 years on.

“His heart virtually stopped. We had to carry out cardiac massage to bring him back from the brink. He then developed blood complications due to septicemia — terrible circulation problems which made his hands and feet swell horribly — and then suffered kidney failure.

“It’s not being melodramatic to say that Lee went right into the jaws of death.”

Dr Speight organised for Lee to be transferred to Newcastle’s Fleming Memorial Hospital for Sick Children, which closed in 1987 and became part of the city’s RVI.

At the Fleming, with his kidneys a prime concern, Lee was operated on by Dr Malcolm Coulthard, now a consultant nephrologist at the RVI.

Janet said: “Lee had swelled up very badly before the operation and we were warned that if the septicaemia had got into his gut, they would have to just sew him up and let nature take its course.”

With the septicaemia attacking Lee’s arms and legs, Janet received more grim news. She said: “We were told he would lose his hands and feet. It was all down to the plastic surgeon at the RVI, Dr Carolyn Reid, that he didn’t.

“She wouldn’t amputate for some reason. She thought there was something that could be done.”

Two decades on, the wisdom of Dr Reid’s decision is gloriously clear.

No fingertips, toes or hearing . . no problem?

HEARTWARMING as it is, Lee Curry’s story begs one basic question . . . how does he do it? Deafness would seem handicap enough for a goalkeeper, but an absence of fingertips and toes?

To put it bluntly, aren’t they basic tools of the job? “ While Lee happily refuses to comply with logic, his ability is at least partly a mystery to him as well.

“He has no balance sensors,” mum Janet pointed out. “Your balance sensors are in your ears and toes.”

And with no fingertips? Lee, somehow, more than gets by. He also gets by in sports like golf and snooker, never mind football. He said: “It’s not a major problem. I can still catch the ball. And I’ve got the other skills you need. Balance, positioning, agility and eyes!”

But doesn’t a lack of toes impact upon another key requirement of the modern goalkeeper . . . his kicking?

Lee said: “The only time it used to be impossible for me to kick the ball was before I had my leg straightened. It was very sore. But after the operation, things improved and improved. I can now get real distance on my kicks.”

Over the halfway line, in fact.

Yet surely deafness is an insurmountable hurdle to a footballer in a mainstream team, where communication — not least for a goalkeeper — is paramount?

Once more, think again. Lee said: “I have no trouble communicating with my defenders. Playing for the deaf team, I wave when I’m coming for the ball. Playing for Rutherford on a Saturday, I shout . . . loud!”

The profile of deaf football has long been on the rise, but hit new heights with the exploits of Horsham striker Lee Farrell in this season’s FA Cup. He scored twice in a televised tie against Swansea.

Lee insisted: “Deafness should not be a barrier to playing professionally at all.

“In league games, with the crowd, the chanting and the atmosphere, players don’t really hear each other anyway. They are just concentrating on the ball.”