Sometimes it just doesn’t pay to dream …

Back in January I suddenly realised that we were not that far away from seeing both boys playing together in the same soccer team.

Matt had decided to play with Dan’s club, the Unley Rangers, in the Collegiate League, and, while Dan was well entrenched as the first team’s keeper and Matt was mostly likely to play division 3, it was not beyond the realm of possibilities that Matt may get his chance to play up a level while Dan filled in down a level for a game.

Of course that all turned to shit late in February when Matt injured the knee that he had been trying to bust for about 4 years. His reconstruction at the end of March meant that my dream would not come true in 2010.

That was spectacularly confirmed at about 4.40 pm yesterday when Dan broke his lower left leg! It was an innocent enough piece of play … Dan rushing out at a striker who thought he was going to get one past him … a clash of both players on the edge of the penalty box … and the save was made. I have probably seen almost 500 very similar saves from Dan.

This time though, instead of the cheers from the supporters all we heard was a blood-curdling scream of agony! To be honest I was pretty sure what it was as soon as I heard Dan, way too much noise for a knee or some other injury. One glance at his leg confirmed it.

After waiting on the cold ground for around 60 minutes he was transferred to Flinders and underwent an operation last night to insert a rod up his leg. He’ll be in for probably a day or two, followed by some time back at home with us.

If anything good has come of this it is the reminder once again of the team spirit at the Rangers. His team-mates, coaches and the supporters hung around for over an hour as it got colder and colder and bloody dark, cracking jokes when they were needed and helping out the ambos when they eventually arrived.

The club was also in contact many times during the evening checking on his condition and the visitors started rocking into hospital at around 10.30 this morning.

So the current score is … 2 sons … zero left legs that work properly!

But … back to my dream. The one good thing about sport is that “there’s always next year!”