Two Hearts

Two Hearts

Jamie Barnard on how a Bolton without retired Fabrice Muamba have the strength to return to The Premier League at the first time of asking...

An eerie silence swept across the stadium. Confusion reigned. The picture of distress painted upon players’ faces strikingly different to that conjured by a disbelieving referee, a last-minute goal conceded or an angry manager. Their team mate, colleague, comrade, lay stricken. His heart had stopped beating.

This didn’t happen to professional footballers. Fine-tuned top athletes didn’t - don’t - break down like this. But Clive Clarke just had.

As the then Leicester City manager Martin Allen gathered his team at the mouth of the City Ground tunnel during that half time break of an August 2007 League Cup match, paramedics fought to re-start Clarke’s heart with a defibrillator. One. Two. Three. Fourth time lucky. His life had been saved.

But if Clarke’s heart had gone in the dressing room, that of the other players went as they endured some semblance of a panicked team talk pitch-side. For them the game had just become unplayable by what they had bore witness to in that supposed inner sanctum of the dressing room.

Bill Shankley once said that football is much more than a matter of life and death. He was wrong. As survivor Clarke is here to testify today: “One life is more important than any football game."

The announcement this week that Fabrice Muamba had decided to retire from professional football was no news. There was nothing novel about it. For the decision was not taken by Muamba, the obligation was his from the second his heart ceased to beat on the White Hart Lane turf in March earlier this year.

Prayers for Muamba might have saved his life, but they could never save his career.

For Muamba the precedent had been set. The road to recovery from heart failure is not one that can be navigated from the physio’s table. It is not a road to be pounded in a gym. Retirement is simply the latest of Clarke’s footsteps in which Muamba is tentatively treading. Four months after his resurrection in Nottingham, Clive Clarke had an optimism belying the magnitude of the affliction he had just suffered: “I'm just hoping to get back into it and get on to the training pitch, hopefully in the next couple of weeks, certainly in the New Year.” Eight weeks later he had his epiphany.

Retirement is the reality. The practicalities of testing a once-waivered body with the rigours of competitive football; impossible. The technicalities of securing a sports insurance premium on a heart failure survivor; impassable. The tough realities of the mental doubt that would have plagued him on his return to the game; insurmountable.

Muamba’s heart is beating once more, but it is broken once again. He may have yearned to return, but a Comeback King he was never to be crowned.

For all of the forfeited further financial riches a lengthy career would have brought Fabrice Muamba, and talent like his doesn’t come cheap, the saying goes that you cannot put a price on life. As Bolton Wanderers chairman Phil Gartside ascertained: “"The most important thing is that Fabrice and his family have the rest of their lives ahead of them." And so, agonisingly, begrudgingly, Fabrice Muamba is forced to accept that, as Clarke before him, his playing days are over.

The consolation? Life goes on.

And life goes on for Bolton Wanderers too. The plight of Muamba was the punctuation in a disastrous season for Owen Coyle’s side, the epitome of adversity sprawled across the ugly face of a relegation campaign.  But on the dawning of this new Championship season, new blood, new hope. The Bolton heart beats again too.

From the squad that competed in the Premiership, key players remain. Kevin Davies, Zat Knight and Sam Ricketts are not ready to desert the Bolton cause just yet, having each signed new contracts this summer. Talented, if injury-plagued, midfielders Stuart Holden, Mark Davies and Lee Chung-Yong have the ability befitting a stage greater than The Championship. Talent which may yet drag The Trotters back into the big time. And from deep within the confines of the Reebok Stadium the scent of that seasonally lauded ‘Championship know-how’ emanates.

Pratley has been, and left, here before. For Great British Olympian Marvin Sordell, familiarity. And in summer signing Matt Mills Bolton have a seasoned Championship campaigner. Whether signing him after a calamitous campaign at Leicester City is a matter of luck or judgement by Coyle, time will tell.

One thing that is for sure, however, is that, without the industry and presence of Fabrice Muamba, Bolton Wanderers will have a chasm in the centre of their midfield. Keith Andrews will have to show more substance than he did playing for the Republic of Ireland in the European Championships this summer, and more nous than he ever did during floundering spells at Premiership level.

 But the squad that Bolton have is as strong as any other that they will pit their wits against this season. The tag of bookmakers’ favourites is, for Bolton, a badge of honour in a division so competitive, testament to the depth and quality of both their squad and their manager. The odds on his side short, the length in his tooth contrasted, Owen Coyle has an opportunity to repay the faith that has been shown in him.

Football, and life, is cyclical. And as one life, but thankfully not that life, ends for Fabrice Muamba, another starts for Bolton Wanderers. Owen Coyle’s side bear the hallmarks of Championship pacemakers.