More than 14,000 people were at The Valley on Saturday and witnessed James Thompson hit the woodwork to win £7,000 in the Valley Gold Crossbar Challenge.
What people may not know, however, is the crucial cause James is donating his winnings to.
Having been nominated by his close friend Andrew Tutt, relative of former Addick Graham Tutt, the pair sat down to discuss where the prize money is going and the remarkable story behind it…
On Wednesday, May 22nd, Andrew’s daughter Grace was involved in a catastrophic accident which saw her life change forever.
“She was travelling home on a school bus when the bus was in a collision with a tractor.” Andrew said. “Grace was airlifted to King’s College Hospital, where there were 12 children all together that were injured - some with bruises and bumps and then a couple of children unfortunately suffered cuts.
“Unbelievably there was a massive jump to Grace’s injuries - the list of injuries was phenomenal, just ridiculous. She is now registered as a quadriplegic because her spine was severed in a couple of different sections. Then on top of that there were multiple other injuries.
“When Grace was airlifted and she was in the emergency department - we have seen the subsequent reports - she was given a 20% chance. They do a scale of one to 15, one being that unfortunately you will probably pass away and 15 is as healthy as you can get. Grace was graded as a three. She received 12 pints of blood whilst she was there.
“I will never forget the day when we saw her in the emergency department, you couldn’t even see Grace, there were so many consultants and trauma surgeons working on her. We were told that the following 24 hours were going to be massive, that 24 hours passed, and it went to 48, then 72.
“In the films they say an induced coma, it’s not an induced coma, she was just completely sedated. All of her functions were on a machine - her breathing and everything was on a machine. She was like that for around two-and-a-half weeks before they reduced some of the medications and she started to flicker in and out every sort of five minutes. She didn’t open her eyes until week three or four.
“Subsequently she had spinal surgery which wasn’t to repair the damage, she was completely broken. She now has titanium plates that are just below the top of her chest and an eight-inch plate either side, basically holding her together. She had that operation in week five.
“We were told by the surgeon that he never thought he’d ever come to do the operation because of how Grace was when she first came in. That was only the second most severe injury she had, the severing of her spinal cord. The one thing that they were most worried about was that Grace had a fracture where the skull joins her spine. She was in one of those big neck buffers to keep her head still and she had a three-inch blood clot on her right-hand side. They couldn’t disperse it as normally they would put a deflated balloon up an artery and they try to pull the clot out, but because of the location it was too dangerous to do as any pressure could have shot the clot to her brain.
“From that clot she had six mini strokes, to a degree. If you could be lucky, the clots were only near and not directly on to really important things. One of them was close to her vision, one was close to her hearing, and one was close to her balance. She has lost a bit of her filter and one of the clots was near concentration. You could be talking to Grace and then she just wanders off into her own world, then she comes back in. That was the area of her injuries that was the most concerning, if that clot shifted then it could have any impact on her brain.
“They put Grace onto blood thinners and within two-and-a-half weeks the blood clot had started to disperse. We spoke to the neurologist, and they said it was like a miracle to a degree. We weren’t expecting anything until two to three months down the line, for it to have happened that quickly, it was ridiculous.
“With the fracture at the top of her spine where it connects to her skull, they were talking about an operation, but they thought it would be too dangerous. They put Grace into a collar you would have for whiplash, but twice the size, she couldn’t move in it. We were told that potentially she could be in the collar for 12 weeks, after three weeks the collar came off because the fracture had. We were told that things could take three to four months so for things to be healing after a couple of weeks, we started questioning if the original diagnosis was correct. They showed us all the CT and MRI scans, sure enough, and just through a bit of a fluke, things healed by themselves.
“We have still got a hell of a long way to go. One of the strokes caused nerve damage to Grace’s right vocal cord and right diaphragm. In the last month we have seem flickers of movement. At the moment Grace can’t talk, she has got a tracheotomy that helps with her ventilation. We don’t know whether she is going to be ventilated for the rest of her life. At the moment, she will be off ventilation for 14 hours, again we have been told that they weren’t expecting that, they were hoping that she may get off it, just not this quick.
“Grace is doing remarkably well. James highlighted some of the main injuries on the JustGiving page, but she had 23 separate injuries in total under five different consultants. Because Grace was in these big blocks around her head, we didn’t know that her eye sockets were fractured, her right cheek had been fractured and she also had seven ribs that were broken back and front, and also a broken nose. On a normal day, if my daughter came home with a broken nose you’d be heartbroken. In the whole list of injuries, they were nothing in comparison.”
Within the past two weeks, Grace has made significant progress as she returned to schooling at King’s College Hospital School and also had her first shower in four months.
“She is incredible, I am incredibly proud of her,” added Andrew, a lifelong Charlton fan.
Andrew admitted that upon finding out that he had been drawn to take the shot at the bar, he thought it was a joke. Being diagnosed with Motor Neurone Disease himself, Andrew was unable to step up from the edge of the box and therefore nominated a close friend in James.
“I initially thought it was a wind-up! I nominated James as deep down I knew, if someone said to me have £1000 on someone to hit the bar, I’d have picked James all day long. I knew he wouldn’t be flustered by it. Because of how much he has supported me, my family and Grace since what happened, I just knew he’d do it. It meant as much for him to do it as it did for me, that was so important.”
James, whose attempt struck the bar twice on Saturday afternoon, explained: “Time with Andrew is less at the minute because of everything he is going through, so it was nice to have time with him and not have to concentrate on everything else going on in his life. It was nice to sit back and watch football with him and his other children Charlie and Bella. All of a sudden it was half-time, and I was putting some boots on! It was an honour to be picked by him.”
Reflecting on the moment, the pair admitted that it was all a bit of a blur: “James turned up with a pair of boots that looked like they were from the 80s!” laughed Andrew. “I can’t remember being so happy after a defeat, it was a completely surreal situation. It was a phenomenal day and it’s a fantastic club, I can’t thank everyone enough.
“It was weird that as soon as he kicked it, I knew it was hitting the bar. My friend sitting in front of me grabbed me, so the next 30 seconds of my video was just looking at my shoes! I remember being absolutely delighted when the man won it before, it’s always nice to see someone win something.”
James added: “When he messaged me, I knew I was going to hit the bar. How could I not be inspired by Grace? She is a miracle, she is healing bones and doing things no one else can do, it was written in the stars. It’s going to sound cliché, but it felt like I hadn’t kicked it, it felt like it was kicked for me. Back in the day I wasn’t known for my footballing finesse, I was known for getting stuck in, but if you watch it back, I actually look quite good which is worrying!
“The power of Grace’s spirit was behind my foot. As soon as I kicked it, I knew it was hitting. It hit it twice actually so I will try to get some more money as it goes! I don’t really remember any of it. I have to relive the moment through the video. I’m used to hitting the bar and not the back of the net, this time I was pleased to do it! People were coming up to me and congratulating me, it was a really nice atmosphere.”
A few months after the accident had taken place, James set up a JustGiving page for Grace. Andrew made it clear from the get-go that all the proceedings would go to Grace in order to buy her whatever she wants, allowing her to live life to the fullest.
“All the money will go to Grace - it’s for whatever she wants to do. It’s got nothing to do with her rehab or buying a wheelchair. It’s purely for Grace to buy makeup or anything else. James started the page around four, five weeks ago. It’s very emotional when you read the messages we are receiving some from people we don’t know, people that have heard the story and done sponsored events to raise money. I can’t thank James enough for what he has done for me.”
The page was created at 3pm on the Thursday afternoon with an initial target of £100,000 in total. Within 48 hours that target had been reached with thousands of donations flooding in.
“When Grace could mouth some words, she asked myself and my wife a question which was heartbreaking. The question was, will people still want to be her friend if she is in a wheelchair? After crying for a few minutes, I said don’t be ridiculous. What we do now is, we don’t show her the amount, we show her how many people have donated, at the moment it is close to 4,000 people. Out of those 4,000 people she might know 100-200 people, she has nearly got 4,000 new friends because of what has happened. James replies to every single person, every person that donated within that first 48 hours were getting personalised messages from James. It’s ridiculous, James has his own family and the commitment to support Grace and us is incredible.”
“We put it up at 3pm on the Thursday, every time it refreshed there was another £1000.” added James. “Because there was limited press, people didn’t really know much about it, it wasn’t covered that well in the press because it couldn’t be as such. The first 48 hours was insane. Grace is a miracle and an inspiration to others out there. She is a fighter, and we are all so proud of how far she has come.”
On Tuesday the page reached the milestone of £150,000 with over 3,800 different individual contributions. Supporters wishing to donate to Grace’s JustGiving page can do so by clicking here.
Charlton fans can support the academy by signing up to the Valley Gold scheme. Valley Gold enables fans to support the club’s academy in unearthing the talents of tomorrow, as well as giving them the chance to win cash prizes.
Click here for more information on how you can become a Valley Gold member.
