Clive Clarke lived to tell the tale after his heart stopped for four minutes. The Sunderland defender was 12 days into a loan spell with Leicester City when he collapsed in the dressing room at half-time during a Carling Cup tie against Nottingham Forest in August 2007.
The paramedics who saved his life at the City Ground used a defibrillator four times to restart his heart after efforts to use mouth-to-mouth resuscitation failed. Clarke, who was 27 at the time, had felt dizzy after he took a drink and came around in an ambulance to learn that he had suffered a heart attack.
The defender, who was capped twice by Ireland, retired from professional football on medical advice in 2008. He has been fitted with a pacemaker and is monitored regularly to detect any changes in his condition.
“Every specialist has told me how lucky I was ,” Clarke said. “I was in the care of people who knew what they were doing and Forest had a defibrillator just down the corridor from the dressing room.”
Clarke has since called for players to have more regular check-ups. At present, players have an ECG and echocardiogram when they sign professional contracts at 16 and are likely to be screened if they move club. Should it be deemed necessary, a player can receive subsequent screenings.
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“It needs to be set in stone [that] every three months the guys get regular checks,” Clarke said. “I do think it needs to be part of the regular life of a footballer now. It’s not rocket science: you are paying these guys a lot of money, so make sure they are fit and well.”
Andy Scott, the Rotherham United manager, retired because of a heart condition when he was 32 and, seven years on, he is patron of a charity called Cardiac Risk in the Young. Playing for Leyton Orient, he discovered he had hypertrophic cardiomyopathy, the same condition that caused the death of Marc-Vivien Foé, the Cameroon midfield player, who died at the Fifa Confederations Cup in 2003.
“We still find problems and either the tests aren’t being read properly or some players are slipping through the net and suffering from potentially life-threatening heart conditions,” Scott said. “I was fortunate that I was one of 2 per cent of people to suffer the symptoms of my condition [without it being] fatal.
“It takes very skilled people to read the echocardiograms and ECGs — but that could be the difference. It costs £30 to have a reading.”
Scott claimed that his cardiologist told him that he did not have to inform the club about his condition. “But every time I took to the pitch it was like playing Russian roulette. It was a no-brainer for me,” Scott said. “[The incident involving] Fabrice Muamba just brings horrible flashbacks.”