Terry Dixon: the ecstasy and the agony

THOSE of us who were in the Mansion House last Wednesday week can still feel a lingering warm glow from our National Junior Sports Stars awards ceremony.

And, no, it’s not just the effects of a liquid lunch.

Nor is this another exercise in trumpet-blowing, just a sincere acknowledgement of the special buzz that is always in the air at this annual event, as some of the best and brightest young sports people in the country gather for what, for many of them, is the first major recognition of their talents and achievements on the national stage. It is also about their hopes and dreams because, by its very nature, the awards are as much about what one hopes is to come as what has gone before.

Alex Ferguson’s presence as guest of honour understandably hogged the headlines last week but what always makes the day special is that the central focus remains on teenage sports people and their proud families and friends. There isn’t much room for ego-mania when, as a previous recipient Ruby Walsh recently recalled, his 1997 win saw him wearing a tuxedo for the first time in his life.

“I remember feeling 10 foot tall on the occasion,” he added which, coming from a jockey, speaks volumes about the excitement of such a big day in such a young life.

Walsh is just one of the past winners who has gone on to become a household name — others include Roy Keane, Sonia O’Sullivan, Brian Corcoran, Anthony Foley, Robbie Keane, Donncha O’Callaghan and Damien Duff. This year’s football winner, the precocious Crystal Palace and Ireland striker, Sean Scannell, is already on course to follow in their footsteps. But, as Alex Ferguson himself reminded Sean and all his fellow award winners, there is no guarantee that, for all their undoubted talent, future success is assured. Total application and plenty of sacrifice will be required if they are to fully realise their potential — and even then, they may discover that it’s still not enough to see the aspiring stars of today become the established stars of tomorrow. Worse still, for the unlucky few, the dream can be cruelly snatched away through no fault of their own.

Last year, Terry Dixon was our award-winner in football.

Having already made waves as a goal-scorer for the Irish U17s, he then became, at age 16, the second-youngest player ever to be called into the senior squad when Steve Staunton brought him to Portugal for Ireland’s warm weather training camp ahead of a friendly against Chile. At that point, Dixon was only a youth player at Spurs but was already as highly thought of at White Hart Lane as he was at international level, where Ireland’s under-age manager Sean McCaffrey is, to this day, happy to describe him as the most talented player he has ever worked with at that age.

The consensus back then — among his coaches, his fellow players and the senior Irish internationals who were knocked out by impression the big, red-headed lad made on them in Portugal — was that Dixon would go on to become not just a successful professional footballer but, potentially, a great one.

Terry Dixon seemed to have the world at his feet. But then came a succession of horrendous injury setbacks which turned his life upside down, replacing the buzz of training and matches with the torture of surgery and rehabilitation. And, then, just two days ago, the following bleak announcement suddenly appeared on the official Spurs website: “Following meetings with Terry Dixon, his family and his representatives at which his long term recovery and future well-being after an unfortunate sequence of severe injuries were discussed, the player has now left the club. The Academy striker, who featured on a number of occasions for our reserve side, suffered a dislocated kneecap, which ruled him out for the entire 2006-07 season before he was able to return to action at the beginning of this campaign. The 18-year-old, however, suffered the same injury again in mid-September during an Academy League fixture and underwent further surgery and extensive rehabilitation. We wish Terry every success for the future.”

It’s understood that the specialists who have tried to rebuild the player’s shattered knee are of the opinion that it will never stand up to the rigours of intensive training, never mind the pressure of top-flight football itself. The clear implication then is that, at the age of just 18, Terry’s career as a professional footballer is effectively over. People close to the Londoner suggest that he hasn’t fully absorbed the news and still believes he can continue to play at a high level in the game. But while one would love to think that he could prove the experts wrong, the concern must be that, in pushing himself and his fragile knee to the limit, he would only succeed in doing himself further physical damage in the long run.

Terry Dixon’s story (so far) is a sobering reminder that the line between glory and disaster can be distressingly fine in sport, something worth bearing in mind the next time you reach for the adjectives “pampered” and “overpaid” to describe your least favourite football star. Even for the game’s established names, as Arsenal’s unfortunate Eduardo has recently discovered, the dream can become a nightmare in an instant.

But how much harder must it be for a youngster when fate intervenes to such devastating effect? And you can’t help but wonder: is it better, in the sporting sense, to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all? Probably, you suspect, the latter. At least those of us who were always basically useless at football only ever entertained dreams of wearing the green shirt when we were of such a tender age that a rival career as an astronaut still seemed like a reasonable fall-back.

But, lest we forget, there are much worse things which can befall the dreamer. Just the other night, I pulled down a book of columns by the great journalist Frank Keating and, for the first time, my eyes fell upon a verse which was sent to him by a woman in Northamptonshire, after her young football-mad son had lost his life in a road accident. Here is what the grieving mother wrote: “Now it will never be, perhaps because of Wembley/An image in the mind of a boy having a reality more tangible than life itself/Was it because of this?/Did the road turn green and the noise of the cars become the cheers of the crowd?/I hope he was scoring the goal at the moment of impact.”

I need hardly add anything more except to say that while, for Terry Dixon, it might feel like the world has ended just now, it hasn’t. Whatever he does with his life in the future, whether it’s inside or outside football, I wish him well and hope he can find it in himself to live it to the fullest.