It is the 13th March, 2016 and Alex Lee is playing for Mervue United in the Connacht Junior Cup. Just another game. He's been in hundreds before, played for Irish representative teams at underage level, graced the League of Ireland First Division with Mervue. Only this isn't just another game.
At one stage in the match, the ball comes out to the edge of the box and Lee goes to shoot. An opponent comes in to block him and straight away, he knows there's something wrong. He's immediately taken to hospital where it is confirmed that he's broken his leg. He's thinking six months out of football.
Six weeks and fourteen surgeries later, he leaves hospital in a wheelchair with his right leg amputated below the knee.
Since then, Lee has been coaching the Galway District League under-15s to an Irish Cup final against Cork, returned to teaching in St Joseph's College in Galway and has been kicking a ball about again, posting videos of himself doing keepie-uppies on social media that have garnered thousands of views.
And talking to Balls.ie, it's clear that the 27-year-old's infatuation with football remains as strong as ever despite the cruel blow he has been dealt:
Even when I got out of hospital, I remember going to watch my team playing and they happened to be playing the team I broke my leg against. We'd played in the cup and now we were playing them in the league. It was at the pitch where I broke my leg, I remember Katie (his girlfriend) being upset and my dad didn’t really want to go to the game, but I wanted to go. There’s nothing stopping me from watching a match, going to a match...I love football and I want to watch it.
Life came one step at a time after the incident. Day by day. Progression into a wheelchair came first, followed by crutches. After getting the prosthetic there was a period of adaptation with the aid of crutches, before getting rid of the crutches altogether. Once school term arrived, Lee set himself individual goals, the significance of them undimmed by their simplicity.
School is in town, five minutes from Shop Street in Galway. At the start, at lunchtime I wasn’t able to go to town to grab a sandwich, I’d go to the corner shop. Then after a week or two I would build myself up and I’m able to walk into town and get a sandwich. So it’s just small things, you just take small steps.
The understated way in which Lee outlines these goals could lead you to miss the significance of the mental transition he was required to go through. Injured so badly playing the game he loves, he could have been forgiven for wallowing in self-pity. In fact, the opposite occurred.
I was in hospital for six weeks and lying flat on my back. Couldn’t move, couldn't get out of bed. You get this determination that...this isn’t going to stop me.
Hundreds of people have said, ‘I wouldn’t have been able to do it’. But when I had to get an amputation it was kind of like, ‘Ok. I’m going to get it, then I’m moving on.' Your friends, your family are thinking it’s terrible - but you want to do it for them. The amount of support they show you, your family and friends. You just want to get back to where you were, or as close to (that).
Nothing’s ever going to be the same for me. But the only thing I can’t do right now is go and play a match on a Saturday and Sunday or go and train on a Tuesday or a Thursday. That’s the only thing I can’t do right now. So you just get a mindset and an attitude that, look, this isn’t going to stop me.
When asked whether he is surprised by how well he has responded to what has happened to him, he brings up the topic of strength. Having strength and courage on the field of play is one thing - the strength to win a challenge, the courage to go in for that challenge in the first place. But Lee says he has had to gather a different type of strength, an equally impressive courage, to face up to how his life has changed:
I was never the bravest player or anything like that, but people always say to me: ‘We didn’t think you were strong.’ I’m a lot stronger than people think, you know that kind of way? It’s a different strength - you mightn’t be the lad flying into tackles. But I’ve shown a different strength now, to overcome everything.
When I was playing I was a small winger, a striker. Tricky, fast. I'm physically strong, as a player I was strong as well. But it’s now that people realise: ‘Actually, he was strong. He knew how to look after himself.' You show a different side that people didn’t see before.
Are there dark moments? For sure. He wouldn't be human otherwise. But he says he reminds himself that there are people in the world worse off, that he is "able to get up, and walk, and go to work, do stuff that I want".
There are times on a Tuesday night when he knows he should be slinging the kit bag over his shoulder and heading to training; these are the tougher days. But he is helped somewhat by the positive response he's received to the videos, by those who have been touched by his story:
When you post a video, you just post it to show your friends. I go to watch a match then, and all the lads are like: ‘I saw your video! Brilliant!’ But you don’t think...you underestimate it, kind of, how interested people are.
You watch the video and all the lads saying it’s brilliant and people saying you’re an inspiration. Personally, you don’t think you’re an inspiration or a legend. I’m just me...I'm just normal Alex.
When asked about the people who have helped him over the past ten months, he says it would take “all day” to name every one of them, but he lists a few: his parents Michelle and Terry, his brother Adam, sister Amy and his girlfriend Katie, the prosthetists Sylvain Cosentino and Donna Fisher at Cappagh (“the journey with them has been crazy as well. I show them the videos and they think it’s phenomenal”) and his physio, Dan McCabe, who he sees once a week.
(Below: Alex Lee absolutely destroys a Royal College of Surgeons full-back and sets up a goal playing for NUI Galway in the 2010 Collingwood Cup. Video credit: eckmort99)
For now, there's a trip to Anfield to watch his beloved Liverpool take on Arsenal in March, a trip to Amsterdam with Katie. There's the Leaving Cert class at St Joseph's to be worrying about, the UEFA B coaching course he was due to take the week after his injury. There's trying to beat his new 'keepy-uppy' record of 115. Not quite 2000, his old record, but he's just as proud of it.
There's all of that, and more. And at the heart of it all lies the game he loves, his passion for it as strong as ever.
