A scrum, a scream and a broken life

Paul Kilbride was a promising young rugby league player - until the game a year ago that put him in a wheelchair. By Rebecca Fowler

It was the match of the season. The Kilbride family gathered on the touchline at Milford amateur rugby league club in Leeds a year ago on Mother's Day to watch their son Paul, 17, play in an important cup match. They watched, in the cold winds, as half time approached with the scores even, when the forwards packed down for a scrum. And they watched as Paul, who knew his team was not ready, went down with a push forwards, a push backwards and a scream.

In one second the Kilbrides' lives changed forever. Paul's father David, 43, a self-employed plasterer, says: "As I ran on to the pitch and he couldn't move his legs, I knew. There was a terrible moment of hope, when an ambulance driver said it might just be a neck spasm, but I knew." In the weeks that followed the match it emerged that Paul had been paralysed from the chest down and would never walk again.

The Kilbrides sometimes ponder whether it was just fate that led to the tragedy, but Paul is one of a disturbing number of boys who have suffered devastating spinal injuries in the course of rugby matches, where players take a risk every time they play. Their plight has been highlighted by a test case in the High Court, due for judgment this week, in which Ben Smoldon, 21, also left paralysed after a scrum collapsed at a rugby union match in Sutton Coldfield in the West Midlands, is suing the referee and a player on the opposing team for more than pounds 1m.

As Paul recalls the moment in the match against Dewsbury Moor, sitting in his wheelchair in the family's semi-detached home in the Leeds suburbs, he bears the same grin he has in a snapshot on the television set that shows him holding a rugby trophy. It is impossible to believe he will not stand up again let alone pursue a promising career as a professional rugby player, as many of his team mates have done.

He explains that, like Ben Smoldon, he was playing hooker, a position customarily occupied by smaller players. "I thought my back had come through my stomach and I was screaming for people to put my legs back down for me, I just felt them go from me, it was like I rocked back, but my legs stayed still," he says. "One minute I'd be screaming and then I'd be talking. Someone came on the pitch and I said `I've never felt as bad as this.' He said `yes you did, when we went to Wembley'. I asked him if we were going again this year. Then I started screaming again."

The agonising wait to find out if Paul would walk again, which stretched into weeks, began at Leeds Infirmary. "The first thing Paul asked at the hospital was what the score in the match was," says David. "In fact we won." Paul adds: "I remember everything at the hospital, funny things, like the man in the next bed who'd choked on a corned beef sandwich. His wife hadn't realised and she'd been cleaning up round him."

After surgery to fit two clamps into Paul's neck he was moved to Pinderfields Hospital in Wakefield for spinal injuries. His mother Janice, a 42-year- old nurse, kept a visitors' book of all the friends who came to see him, in which she also included diary entries of his tortured recovery process as he learnt to sit up in his chair for the first time for more than a few minutes. His blood pressure had plummeted, he had lost control of his temperature and would sweat profusely, like many paralysis victims. Any movement of his upper body was painful. On 11 April last year Janice recorded: "Paul's first meal in his chair. He managed a few greasy chips and a sausage."

At the outset his friends and fellow players could not comprehend that he would not get better. They sent him an enormous Milford rugby shirt to "Killer", as he was known by team mates, and they wrote on it: "Together we will walk out of here. The lads." On the day of the accident Gavin, his best friend and now a professional rugby league player, came to pick him up in the car unaware of the seriousness of the accident.

Even Paul's sparkiness cannot conceal the emotional response from all those around him. On Easter Monday they held an anniversary beneficiary for Paul at Milford and he was presented with pounds 50,000 by the club from friends and local fund-raising events. Janice says: "When I spoke to Gavin's mum on the phone a few weeks ago, she said he'd never cried like he did over Paul, not even when he was a little boy. Everybody was totally stunned, and they all thought he was going to be all right. They still can't quite believe he's not."

After six months in hospital, Paul finally came home in his wheelchair in October. Half the lounge had been converted into a bedroom for him, and he gradually learnt to cope as much as he could on his own. Paul says: "It's like being born again. You have to learn to do everything for the first time again. You lie there thinking how am I going to dress myself? How am I going to get out? How am I going to do all the things I did?"

The family have used a large portion of the pounds 30,000 he received on the club's insurance to buy a hand-operated car for him, although a new lightweight wheelchair to allow him to get into it without help will cost another pounds 1,500, and they have built a small extension that he will use as a bedsit with a specially adapted bathroom.

As they browse through the scrapbook of Paul's rugby career, it is impossible for David not to show his pride at what might have been, despite modest protestations from his son. "If things had gone right for him Paul had a chance to play rugby league professionally," says his father. "A lot of the boys have gone professional, and seven out of the team that played that day have signed professional. Paul was as good as any of them in his day."

A year on, Paul is stoical about his accident. "The way I look at it, I could have walked off the pitch that day and been run over by a car," he says. But although he still goes to nightclubs in Leeds, where all the bouncers know him, and his mother teases him about a holiday romance, while both parents argue over what job he might like to do in the future, their greatest fear is for his long-term security.

And as parents they are still concerned about the issues surrounding the game, including the standard of refereeing, whether there should be more protective clothing, and they have already taken out private insurance for Mark, 14, their younger son. The increase in the number of parents taking out such policies is a testimony to the danger players face.

The family smile blackly at Mark's broken thumb, from a recent match. He received a pounds 400 payout, and although the Kilbride family pray lightning will not strike twice, if he did ever suffer the same injuries as Paul, Mark would receive pounds 100,000.

If Ben Smoldon wins his case, it is likely to open the floodgates for similar claims, with victims allowed up to three years to come forward. Although the Kilbrides are not interested in discussing whether they would follow suit, they remain anxious about the financial strains on them, and although they have accepted that Paul will not walk again, even now, behind the wall of courage, they cannot help sometimes dreaming of a miracle that all the compensation in the world could not buy.

As she closes the scrap-book, Janice says: "At the Pinderfields they said they never tell anyone they won't walk again, but they said it's a one in a million chance. People said to me afterwards, that's better than the lottery, you've got a one in 40 million chance of winning that. But it's not better, it's worse than knowing for sure."

Anyone who wishes to make a donation to The Paul Kilbride Benefit Fund, which has raised more than pounds 50,000 for him, may write c/o Jim Irons, Milford Rugby League Club, Beecroft St, Leeds LS5 3A.