At 30-something and with my hopes - read fantasies - of playing in the World Cup fading with each step I take over the proverbial hill, it was always going to be something miraculous that elevated me into football's elite.
That act of God finally came in November 2000. In a trademark shimmy during training - at Indian Gymkhana's Osterley ground, hardly Liverpool FC's Melwood - my studded sole lodged into the AstroTurf. And there it remained, jammed, while the rest of my body attempted to haul me forward. The resulting strain, arising from a rupture of my anterior cruciate ligament (ACL), is an agony I would not wish on anyone, even if he plays for Manchester United.
Actually I have some sympathy for the likes of Roy Keane and Ruud van Nistelrooy, whom the injury has sidelined at one time or another. Ex- England stars Paul Gascoigne and Alan Shearer have also been struck down; literally. With one of the key connections between upper and lower leg severed, the tibia loses a crucial support, rendering it highly unstable. "Wobbly knee" they call it in the medical profession.
But this is where the similarities with superstars end. While Gazza et al were wheeled straight into the operating theatre, I passed into the hands of the lumbering NHS, in the shape of the casualty ward at Northwick Park hospital, Harrow.
My first x-ray showed no breaks or fractures. The doctors sent me on my merry way with the advice to take it easy for a while. But six weeks later I was back, complaining that my knee was giving way under the strain. They put me down on the waiting list for an arthroscopy - exploratory keyhole surgery in which a camera is inserted into your knee. Four months on from my injury, I got the news I was dreading; I'd suffered a cruciate tear.
Still, I should not have been complaining. Until around 20 years ago there was no return from a torn ACL. Today, however, medical advances mean the injury need not be career-threatening. Like road accidents, the tendency is to shrug it off as something that always happens to somebody else. But it is something that can be caused in the most innocuous looking incidents. Last month the France and Arsenal midfielder Robert Pires tore his right anterior cruciate from a harmless-looking landing.
Missing football should have been the last thing on my mind. Since my brain had not yet got used to the fact that I was a ligament short of a full leg, it would still send an impulse to my body to make a dash for a waiting bus, with crippling results. Repeated knee collapse is a common symptom of torn ACLs. This in turn makes the knee vulnerable to further re-injury because it can damage other ligaments supporting the knee joint, including the medial and lateral collateral ligaments and the meniscal cartilages. Therefore each day I spent awaiting diagnosis and treatment increased that risk.
By the time my operation date came around in August, it was no longer my knee that was the major concern. My heart packed up - a freak reaction to the general anaesthetic. The first flat line lasted six seconds, the next a full 30. The doctors had no choice; they aborted. And I returned to the dreaded waiting list.
In most NHS trust hospitals, ACL surgeons wait until they have a batch of patients before clearing them out in one fell swoop. The reason, inevitably, is economic constraints. In my manor, north-west London, there are just six orthopaedic surgeons catering for some 360,000 people. The ratio of 1:60,000 compares with 1:20,000 on the continent and 1:7,000 in the US.
The reconstruction surgery was rescheduled for November 13 2001, almost a year to the day since I sustained my injury. This time I would be rigged up with a pacemaker - a wire pushed through the subclavian vein under my collarbone and guided into a chamber of the heart. Connected to a battery, it would jump into action should my heart decide to have another siesta.
But the pleasure would have to wait. I arrived at the hospital only to be told there was a shortage of anaesthesists and I would have to go back on the waiting list, albeit as a priority case. Eight weeks later I was back and finally the operation went ahead. It is fairly routine stuff, according to the medical websites. Surgeons graft a new ligament, removed from the patient's own patellar or hamstring tendons, in the knee joint at the site of the former ACL and then fix it to the thigh and lower leg bones with screws. If all goes well, as it does in 95% of cases, footballers should be back on the park in six to eight months.
But this, if I needed to be reminded, was the NHS. That is not to say my surgery did not go well. That part was fine, even if I had to put up with some workshy and curmudgeonly nurses, sleepless nights caused by patients who should have been kept isolated, and the general disillusionment of a demoralised staff working in surroundings a visiting Italian friend described as "third world".
My five-day stay in the orthopaedics wing of Northwick Park ended on January 19 this year. But my ordeal continued. Less than a week later, I noticed a reddening of my lower leg accompanied by heavy inflammation. I would have dismissed it as a harmless side effect except that a doctor I know insisted I have it checked out for the possibility of deep vein thrombosis, the potentially deadly condition better known to us as economy class syndrome.
A venogram (injecting x-ray dye into your blood vessels) confirmed the worst. Only one in 100 patients who have invasive surgery develop clotting, which if treated early enough with stabilising injections - to stop the coagulate from travelling through the body - and tablets to thin the blood, is easily cured. Could my luck get any worse?
Yes. One of the most frustrating effects of an ACL tear and subsequent reconstruction is severe muscle wastage, especially in the upper half of the leg. The hamstring and quadri ceps need to be rebuilt, and it requires intense exercise. I had been discharged from hospital - on crutches - with the promise that I would have a physiotherapy appointment within two weeks (ACL patients are set on a physiotherapy course as soon as possible after surgery to help reverse the loss of strength). My appointment came through after five weeks.
Calling it bad luck is perhaps being generous. My physio told me they had not received a referral for me from orthopaedics. Now, I am pleased to say, regular physiotherapy is under way. To make up for the lost time, I have scrounged a bicycle, which will help strengthen the leg until I can start jogging again. For most patients light running should be possible three months after the operation.
As for football, I hope to be ready for the start of the coming season. Now compare that with Robert Pires' timetable. Naturally, he is inconsolable to be missing out on the World Cup, but touch wood, he will probably be running out for Arsenal again by the end of September.
You might say that is the difference between the spending on a top-flight professional and a local league amateur, and you would be right. But the gap also represents the difference between public- and private-sector health care. Before I play again, you can bet I will be taking my NHS consultant's advice and buying into Bupa. A fiver a week is a small price to pay for a year's football, and avoiding the neolithic NHS. Or as my mum says, I could just hang up my boots. Now why didn't I think of that?
