Just glad to be staying alive

Daniel Tayloron life for Clive Clarke since the heart-stopping drama at Leicester that turned into a battle for his very life

The first thing to report about Clive Clarke is he seems to be bearing up. He is on his feet, keeping busy, the doctors are pleased with his progress and he looks pretty good for a man who has just stared death in the face. He has to take things easy but on Thursday he took his family to Cork and felt okay to drive the 200 miles from his house, on the outskirts of Stoke-on-Trent, to the ferry terminal at Swansea. They are having a short holiday and, when he is ready, he will come back to England to find out if he can ever play professional sport again.

It has been 25 days since Clarke, a seemingly fit 27-year-old, suffered heart failure at half-time of Leicester City's League Cup tie at Nottingham Forest and it is probably only to be expected that he is still struggling to make sense of it all. He is not maudlin but 10 days in a hospital bed has given him time to think about the events that have turned his life upside down.

There is no logic, or reasonable explanation, he can find to determine why a professional footballer in peak condition can end up lying on a dressingroom floor, technically dead, until being brought back to life with electric-shock treatment.

Clarke's heart had stopped beating for four minutes, making his survival a miracle, and there are moments when he is filled with a profound sense of helplessness. But then he thinks about what happened to Antonio Puerta at Sevilla earlier this season, plus the death of 16-year-old Anton Reid on Walsall's training pitches, and he knows he is not the unlucky one after all. "They didn't survive, and I did. I came home, they didn't. I just feel so sorry for their families, but it's so hard to get my head around it all."

It has been a time for reflection, and reminding himself about what truly matters. "Bill Shankly was wrong," he says. "Football isn't more important than life or death and I don't think he would ever have said that if he had nearly lost his life in the middle of a game. It is a fantastic life, but there's a big world outside football too. I've been through an experience I wouldn't recommend to anyone and it has opened my eyes. It's made me appreciate things that I once took for granted and it's made me realise everything I have got."

He is talking, in particular, about his wife, Sally, and their baby daughter, Erin, the two most important people in his world. Erin is 11 months and it sends a chill down his spine that he might never have seen her first birthday. "That has been the most harrowing part, looking at my little girl and knowing how close she was not to having a father. I see her playing, and it's very difficult to think I could have left her forever. It's been very hard for Sally, too, but I'm still here - so there's relief as well as all the other emotions."

Only he and Sally can truly comprehend the impact it has had on their lives but, suffice to say, it was probably for the best she was not at the City Ground on August 28th, and had no idea what had happened until he was well enough to sit upright and ask someone to ring her. Clarke was only 12 days into a three-month loan from Sunderland - an agreement that meant he had to take a stringent medical examination - and the Dublin-born defender, the classic "good pro", had gone into the match with the intention of cementing a place at left back.

"It was just like any other game," he recalls. "I'd felt a little more tired than usual but I just put that down to the fact we had played Watford the previous Saturday and that had been a very hot day. I came off the pitch at half-time and I felt absolutely fine. I went into the dressingroom and I picked up a drink. Then there's a void. The next thing I knew, I was in the back of an ambulance on my way to hospital."

His heart had given up and the paramedics - called in by Leicester's medical team and, fortunately, already at the ground - had to use a defibrillator to try to revive him. Once, twice, three times they sent a controlled electric shock through his body, but with no success. Then, on the fourth occasion, his body responded.

"It's hard to get my head around it all because, like everyone else, I always assumed my heart and lungs were in great condition and took it all for granted. But I was lucky because if it had been on a training ground, rather than at an actual game, it might not have been enough having trained medical staff on the scene. Some clubs have defibrillators at their training grounds, but some don't. And without one, I wouldn't have survived."

Is there a lesson to be learned? "Yes, that every club should have a defibrillator on-site. It's not a great expense, particularly when you consider the potential implications of not having one. There are clubs, even in the lower divisions, who pay players hundreds of thousand of pounds every year, so surely they could afford a couple of thousand to buy a defibrillator that could save someone's life. I really think it should be brought into the FA's rules."

Clarke was taken to the cardiology unit at Nottingham University Hospital and underwent minor surgery to have an internal defibrillator fitted. "I've had a lot of tests but they still don't know what caused it and I don't know if they will ever know. On the one hand, I want to know exactly what made it happen and it's very frustrating that I can't get the answers. On the other, I'm relieved because they have not found any sign of heart disease and I'm not going to have to spend the rest of my life on medication."

So what next? It is a difficult question, one that he cannot answer properly just yet, but, ideally, he dearly hopes to resume a career that has taken him from Stoke to West Ham and Sunderland, as well as earning him two Republic of Ireland caps. Yet there is also a possibility he will be forced out of the game on medical advice. "I'm not stupid, and I know there's a chance of that, but there's also a very good chance I will be okay," he says. "It's still very early, but it's something I'm thinking about. The consultants will know more than me and I will go by what they say."

In the meantime, "I'm just relaxing, taking it easy, going out a little, not overdoing things." He is with Sally and Erin and that, he says, is what matters most.