AN AIR ambulance had to land on the Shaw Lane cricket pitch on Saturday after a ‘horrific’ injury to one of the Barnsley Woolley Miners players.
Ethan Shillito, 24, from Kexborough, was playing for Barnsley’s second team against Upper Haugh in South Yorkshire League Division One.
He was sliding to stop a ball in the outfield when he dislocated and broke his ankle plus serious ligament damage.
Second team captain Andrew Clayton said: “It was an horrific experience.
“Ethan was in absolute agony and screaming.
“The ambulance arrived very quickly, I think it was already in town on standby at an event.
“The paramedics said there was no blood going to his foot and he was in danger of losing it.
“So they had to fly in a doctor on the air ambulance to perform a procedure on the outfield to get to blood flowing back to his foot.
“We sometimes have air ambulances landing on the rugby pitch if there has been an accident on the motorway. But it was quite a sight and added to the all-round feeling of: ‘what on Earth is going on?’
“Then Ethan was driven to hospital in the ambulance and was in hospital all weekend. He was still in his cricket whites at 8pm Sunday night.
“He’s due to have an operation this week and he’ll be out for a considerable period of time. But he will be fine.
“The umpires were absolutely brilliant and handled the situation really well. Upper Haugh were good about it as well.
“His mate Will Nicholson, who also plays for us, stayed with him on the pitch and all evening in hospital.”
Barnsley are hoping the incident will not impact the players too badly.
Clayton said: “We have a very, very young team. We had to take them into the dressing room and shut the doors and windows so they couldn’t hear the screaming.
“We’d all heard the snap when it happened and it’s not nice at all to see your team-mate in so much pain.
“We don’t want it to affect the young lads.
“We have offered help for them to speak to someone about what they saw and heard.
“We will have a meeting for everybody who played in the game this week.
“The main message is that it was a freak accident and we don’t want them to be put off playing.”
Andrew has set up a Gofundme page for Ethan, his partner and their young daughter while he is unable to work following the injury.
