Fallen Heroes: # 3

T

he tropical air was laden with warm spring feelings under the dark Omdurman sky. The flood lights fully beaconed sparked the atmosphere along with fiery chants of 30,000 spectators. It was a humid Saturday night that saw two high profile Sudanese football clubs file out against each other in a competitive league game.

El-Merriekh and Al-Mal football teams were the arena’s focal point.  

The referee’s screaming blow commissioned the match’s kick-off.

With much rigour and intensity, both sides put up impressive displays against each other early on. The game’s tension wearing on saw a potential opener when El-Merriekh had a free-kick and sent their men forward to make the best of it. In the ensuing movement towards the opponent’s goal, a minor confusion occurred as one of the El-Merriekh men remained face-down on the pitch’s green. Pokes, prods and jolts sent by team-mates of the distressed man were met with no response. The team’s captain spotting the strange phenomenon determinedly beckoned on medical teams from the sidelines to salvage the degenerating ill.

All of these momentarily halted the progress of the game.

Spectators, bemused at the happening sought enlightenment from the scene’s replay on displaying overhead mega screens. In slow motion at more zoomed-in angles, an El-Merriekh shirt in an energetic thrust towards the opponent’s goal dropped gradually to the ground with a bumping hard impact on a fellow team-mate. At the mouth of this all was 25-year old Nigerian attacker, Endurance Idahor.

The responsive medical team hurried the ailed player off the pitch to a waiting ambulance. Upon arrival at the hospital, he was pronounced dead-on-arrival by receiving medicals that assessed and opined he passed-on on his way there. Extensive autopsy findings revealed a circulatory collapse as the cause of death.

Circulatory collapse is a state when there is a failure in the transmission of blood to parts within the body. Based on target blood supply areas, circulatory collapse is classified as either cardiac (heart is the target area) or peripheral (tissues and other organs are the target areas). Before collapse occurs, an inadequacy of blood described as ‘insufficiency’ persists and usually results in low blood volume that precipitates shock or organ failure. This weakens blood vessels and mortally reduces the pressure in them causing low oxygen levels and consequently, faints in sufferers.

A number of factors have been isolated as causes; heart disease, surgery, drugs affecting blood pressure, high levels of salt and blood clots. Prevention of this can best be effected by maintaining diets beneficial to the heart and minimizing physical activity during severe fatigue. Comprehensive blood pressure checks and tests should also be carried out often whether or not fatigue is experienced. 

Endurance, who may have been a sufferer of any of these, was probably unaware of his state which was made worse by the rigour of running up and down the pitch. In such severe shock, insufficiency must have quickly given way to collapse and eventually, his death. This event strengthens renewed calls for elaborate medical screening for footballers before and after games. 

He is today survived by a wife and young children.

During the pitch frenzy and medical emergency on the game's thirteenth minute mark, the referee called an indefinite time-out.

The match never continued afterwards….