I started pre-season at Arsenal with a huge hole in my side after club scout saved my life – I thought I was dying
MARTIN KEOWN has revealed that he thought he was “dying” during an Arsenal trip to France.
The former defender, 58, began his career in the Gunners’ academy.
Part of a gifted crop that also included Tony Adams, David Rocastle and Niall Quinn, Keown had issues with youth team coach Tommy Coleman.
Appearing on The Rest is Football alongside Gary Lineker and Alan Shearer, Keown revealed that he suffered a health scare during a trip away with the team.
“I was forced to go on a trip abroad,” he began. “I had broken and dislocated my elbow, and I had to go to France to watch…
“He (Coleman) rang me and said ‘you’re not having a holiday fella, we’re on holiday, you’ve not got your feet up, you come with us’.
“And then I started getting a grumbling appendix problem. For three days I was literally lying in the dormitory, ‘Yeah I can’t go out, I’m in too much pain’.
“And I thought ‘I’m dying, I’m literally dying’. And I had a voice in my head saying ‘You better do something’.
“(The) Italian team next door didn’t speak English. Steve Rowley the club scout, you may have heard that name, he just turned up in the car park.
“And I used to say to him every day I saw him after that ‘You saved my life… If you didn’t turn up…’
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“He went off, he’d gone for a few hours but eventually they got medical care to me and went straight in, and I had peritonitis in the end, where the appendix burst.
“And that was all around that Gary, all around that coach… In fact, I started pre-season with a big hole in my side.
“And I couldn’t straighten my elbow because I’d broken and dislocated my elbow.
“But I didn’t want to sit in the medical room for another pre-season because I had gone through a lot of that.”
Following his difficulties with Coleman, Keown left Arsenal for Aston Villa in 1986 having made just 22 first team appearances.
Following seven years away and a further stint at Everton, he eventually returned to Highbury in 1993, where he would then stay for 11 years.
‘TOOK THAT PERSONALLY’
During his chat with Lineker and Shearer, Keown opened up on where he felt his issues with Coleman had begun.
He said: “You go into digs and you’re reliant on where you end up. It was all great when I was doing my trials with nice families and then suddenly there wasn’t anywhere to stay.
“So I went and stopped with Tommy. And Tommy had been a part-time coach previously, but now he was full-time. You’re coming home and you’re with the youth team manager, making the tea, there’s never any kind of respite.
“In my wisdom I went to see Steve Burtenshaw, head of the youth team, and said ‘I think it would be better if I moved somewhere else’.
“But Tommy took that personally. And so did his wife. She literally just wanted to fling me out that very night.
“He said ‘You’ve made life murder for me now, so I’m going to make life difficult for you’. And he did.”