He later learned that 10 days earlier he had crashed his car into a tree. If his body hadn’t been so used to the impact of contact sports, he would probably be dead. A tracheostomy was fitted because he couldn’t breathe on his own. He had been paralysed from the chest down. “They said, ‘You’re not going to walk again. You’re going to be in a wheelchair, but you will be completely independent.’ I just had to learn how to do that.”