It was, Alex Fletcher says, just an ordinary matchday but one that soon spiralled into the extraordinary and almost culminated in tragedy. There were the usual routines and rituals: the two-hour car journey from Exeter to Twerton Park with a few of his Bath City teammates, his double step and jump before the pre-match handshakes. He was on a high after scoring the winning goal at Tonbridge Angels in the National League South three days earlier, feeling on top of his game with the club pushing for the sixth‑tier playoffs. But five minutes into November’s match against Dulwich Hamlet, after haring on to a pass and attempting to cross the ball first time, Fletcher received a nudge and went thudding into advertising hoardings reinforced with concrete blocks.
His head pounded and there was a deafening ringing sound in his ears. Paramedics on the scene treated him for concussion, potential spine complications and kept him still. The concern on the face of his manager, Jerry Gill, the Bath chairman, Nick Blofeld, and the teammates drifting in and out of his eyeline told him everything. “Then I heard the stadium announcer say the game was abandoned,” Fletcher says. “At that point I knew it had to be serious. I actually remember feeling a bit of guilt, thinking: ‘Oh no, Dulwich have come all the way from London.’ I know what it is like, a massive pain to have to make that journey again, especially on a Tuesday night.”
Forty-five minutes later he was in a neck-brace in the back of an ambulance, his mother, Alison, in the front, and heading for emergency neurosurgery at Southmead hospital in Bristol. Fletcher vomited over a paramedic en route. His father, Paul, was following in a car. “I felt like if I fell asleep or passed out, that could have been it, really,” Fletcher says. “I was telling myself: ‘You have to stay awake for as long as you can.’ I suppose it was that kind of sink-or-swim reaction. Then I remember the lights as I was wheeled into the hospital, really bright lights above my head. Subconsciously I knew I had made it somewhere where I would be looked after. I blanked out after that.”
His fiancee, Ellie, arrived at the hospital to Fletcher fitting and unresponsive. Emergency CT scans detailed Fletcher had suffered multiple fractures to the skull and sustained substantial swelling on the brain. “As grim as it sounds, the concern was the brain exploding from the pressure,” he says. Dr Neil Barua drained cerebral fluid from Fletcher’s brain, removed small pieces of his skull and vertebrae, inserted a pressure monitor and placed him into an induced coma, in which he stayed for a week.
The neurosurgeon advised Fletcher’s family that his injuries were synonymous with a motorcycle accident, not a National League South match, and painted a worrying picture. “They were given the worst news, that my chances were pretty slim and that even if I pulled through it might not be possible to live my life as it was before. My family were prepared for me waking up and not recognising them, or being a completely different person.”
Listening to Fletcher recount the episode with such positivity is inspiring and moving. He had to learn how to walk again but considers himself fortunate that the only known lasting impacts of the incident is that his left ear is classed as dead – he is having a cross-aid that will assist his hearing fitted this week – and the sight in his right eye has been affected. He experiences extreme double vision. “I’m hoping that one day my vision will return and that will be quite a big factor because I can’t play football with two balls on the pitch,” he says, laughing.
Fletcher’s respect for Barua is palpable. “The NHS is remarkable beyond words. He [the surgeon] would have received the call getting ready for bed that evening and was effectively briefed on the way to hospital. Then at the drop of a hat he is there ready to operate and save my life, which I just … I still struggle to get my head around to this day. Some people call, say, stepping up for a penalty pressure. It is nothing compared to what these guys do.” The care Fletcher expresses for the wellbeing of the Bath ground staff, physios and paramedics who helped him that night speaks volumes for his character: “I’ve had good catchups with them to check in on them and make sure that they have dealt with what happened in the right way.”
Fletcher’s story sent shock waves across the game. A Bath supporter set up a GoFundMe page that has raised more than £18,000, including £500 from rivals Taunton Town. At one end of Twerton Park a giant banner now reads: “Super Alex Fletcher”. The flood of messages, Fletcher says, reduced him to tears. Gareth Southgate offered his best wishes in a video sent from Qatar. “For him during the World Cup to take the time and send that message really opened my eyes and gave me the strength to think: ‘Yeah, I can do this and continue making good progress.’”
The 24-year-old has started to join the warmup before some matches and recently completed a 5km run in 21 minutes. “I still sometimes get the effects of vertigo when I’m waking up first thing in the morning, just mildly, but compared to what I experienced in hospital and where I was with my mobility then, I’m smashing it, really.” He smiles. “Physically and mechanically I’m starting to get there, back to where I want to be to return to football. For me it’s just about what the surgeon will say, going forward. The ultimate aim is for me to return and I just need to consider his advice with an open mind. I’m not going to put my life at risk again.”
As for the makeup of advertising hoardings and their proximity to pitches, Fletcher and the Professional Footballers’ Association have been campaigning for tighter regulations to enhance player safety and have raised the issue with the sports minister, Stuart Andrew. The PFA has said incidents such as Fletcher’s – last December the Stockport defender Macauley Southam-Hales was hospitalised after colliding with advertising hoardings in an FA Cup match – should act as a wake-up call to the game. “Would you put a brick wall at the end of a 100m running track where people are competing to beat each other to the finish line?” Fletcher says. “So why would you do it so close to the edge of a football pitch? Something needs to change because it does not make any sense.”
Fletcher now finds joy in the mundane. “I do really truly appreciate every day that I’m able to do something. Whereas before it would maybe have been a chore to go on a run to get myself topped up [fitness-wise] or to go and get the weekly shop in, now I’ve changed my mindset: ‘I get to do that. I’m able to do that.’”
His family and fiancee understand his desire to return to the game. But first Fletcher, who has returned to work four days a week as a project manager in IT, is relishing another fixture: he and Ellie, his partner of more than 10 years, tying the knot on 28 May. “For some time I was quite worried about it,” he says. “But it looks like I’m going to be able to attend and walk down the aisle.”
