onlyagame
Well-known member
Interesting article in today’s Telelgraph & it might make you think twice before you c*** a player off (or a manager) Anyone remember being there?
“But he had returned to training, and Millwall, the club he had joined from Chelsea, were short of goalkeepers.
Pidgeley, who was 23 at the time, still cannot recall anything about the game, including the result (a 4-2 victory for Leeds United), other than his panic attack. Remembering the day remains an uncomfortable experience. “It had started during the summer, in the off-season,” Pidgeley says. “I started getting anxiety attacks and I’d be in bed, door locked under the covers with all the curtains closed. Millwall had sent me to the Priory and I hadn’t played for months.
“I’d just got back training a little bit and the goalkeeper who was on loan couldn’t play. I had been feeling a little bit better and the next thing I knew I was playing at Elland Road, first game back.
I was in the toilet 10 minutes before kick-off having a panic attack. I was dripping with sweat, vomiting, my heart was pumping out of my chest and I was trying to convince myself that my hamstring was going to go. I thought about it so much that I could feel my hamstring actually tightening up.
Then I was running out there, standing in front of 30,000 people. Three weeks earlier, I was thinking about killing myself and now they’re calling me a w-----, and whatever, and I’m just thinking, ‘Oh my God, if you knew what was going on in my head’
“But he had returned to training, and Millwall, the club he had joined from Chelsea, were short of goalkeepers.
Pidgeley, who was 23 at the time, still cannot recall anything about the game, including the result (a 4-2 victory for Leeds United), other than his panic attack. Remembering the day remains an uncomfortable experience. “It had started during the summer, in the off-season,” Pidgeley says. “I started getting anxiety attacks and I’d be in bed, door locked under the covers with all the curtains closed. Millwall had sent me to the Priory and I hadn’t played for months.
“I’d just got back training a little bit and the goalkeeper who was on loan couldn’t play. I had been feeling a little bit better and the next thing I knew I was playing at Elland Road, first game back.
I was in the toilet 10 minutes before kick-off having a panic attack. I was dripping with sweat, vomiting, my heart was pumping out of my chest and I was trying to convince myself that my hamstring was going to go. I thought about it so much that I could feel my hamstring actually tightening up.
Then I was running out there, standing in front of 30,000 people. Three weeks earlier, I was thinking about killing myself and now they’re calling me a w-----, and whatever, and I’m just thinking, ‘Oh my God, if you knew what was going on in my head’
