Tom Lockyer and Luton had been here before – it made the sense of dread all the greater

True relief will have to wait until he receives a clean bill of health, but how encouraging it was to hear, on Saturday evening, that Tom Lockyer is in a stable condition in a south-coast hospital.

It was impossible not to fear the worst when Lockyer, the captain of Luton Town, fell to the ground midway through the second half of his team’s Premier League match against Bournemouth. There had been no obvious collision in the moments prior to his collapse and so a sense of panic immediately gripped the Vitality Stadium. The body language of Lockyer’s team-mates laid bare the depth of their concern.

The 29-year-old was attended by paramedics and club staff on the field before being carried off on a stretcher. Almost half an hour after it was first stopped, the game was abandoned. No one cared or complained about that. The importance of a football result is not remotely commensurate with that of a human life.

Luton have confirmed Lockyer suffered cardiac arrest on the pitch. He will undergo further tests in hospital in the hours and days ahead.

This would all have been hugely distressing whatever the identity of the player. The fact it was Lockyer, though, added an extra layer or two of resonance to everything. Those watching through their fingers and whispering prayers were not just worried because there was a player lying prone on the grass. They were especially worried because it was him.

It should have been the greatest day of Lockyer’s career. It will probably still be somewhere up there, when the balance sheet is drawn up, but it certainly did not go as planned.

27 May 2023: Luton vs Coventry in the the Championship play-off final. Luton were one match away from reaching the top flight for the first time in 31 years — and from completing a frankly ludicrous journey from non-League football to the top of the English pyramid within a decade.

They were led out at Wembley by Lockyer, a player whose own personal trajectory echoed that of his club. The centre-back had clawed his way through the divisions with Bristol Rovers, toughing it out in the Conference Premier in 2014-15 (the fifth tier of English football) and making it as far as League One a couple of seasons later. With Charlton Athletic and then Luton, he had demonstrated he was good enough to survive — thrive, even — in the Championship.

History beckoned on that summer’s afternoon, but Lockyer only got a small taste of it. Eight minutes after kick-off, he slumped to the floor and required medical attention. He watched the final stages of the match — watched his team-mates seal promotion via a dramatic penalty shootout — from a bed at London’s Cleveland Clinic.

Doctors later diagnosed Lockyer with an atrial fibrillation, a type of heart arrhythmia.

The condition is not uncommon in sport: research published by the British Journal of Sports Medicine suggests athletes might be more than twice as likely as non-athletes to experience irregular heart rhythms.

Still, the sight of a footballer collapsing during a match will always ring alarm bells given the tragic deaths of Cameroon international Marc-Vivien Foe and former Newcastle United midfielder Cheick Tiote after similar incidents in 2003 and 2017 respectively. The image of Christian Eriksen, unconscious on the turf during Denmark’s game against Finland at Euro 2020, was also fresh in the memory.

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Lockyer later admitted he could not remember hitting the ground, but did not appear overly worried. “It was probably a lot worse for everyone else watching than it was for me,” he said in June. “As soon as I came back around, I was fine. I never really felt in any danger and it definitely wasn’t as bad as it looked.

“I’ve had the operation to fix it and it shouldn’t happen again. There’s not really any reason to say why that happened. I’ve been given the all-clear. I just want to draw a line under it now and move on.”

It is clearly far too early to draw any concrete conclusions about Saturday’s events, let alone make any connection with what happened in May. That is a job for the doctors and cardiologists. The context does, though, help to explain why Lockyer’s manager, Rob Edwards, looked quite so emotional at the Vitality. He has now seen his captain lying stricken on the field of play twice in seven months. Of course there is a multiplier effect.

There will now naturally be thoughts about Lockyer’s playing career, not least because he has performed so admirably since arriving at the highest level. He is, beyond everything else, just a lovely, honest throwback of a centre-back, the kind of player who would hurl himself through a brick wall to prevent a goal, then offer to repair the damage after the final whistle. He has not been cowed by the Premier League; it has ennobled him.

These are, however, secondary concerns. Lockyer’s wellbeing comes before his job. Further medical updates will come in time and will provide guidance. For now, we must be thankful he is stable and in good hands. At the end of a grim, sombre afternoon, that counts as a silver lining.

(Top photo: Mike Hewitt/Getty Images)