‘Heart screening in sport needs to be improved after Lockyer’ says ex-England cricketer
James Taylor, the England cricketer forced to retire at 26, has urged sporting authorities to improve heart screenings after footballer Tom Lockyer’s second collapse in seven months.
Luton Town have yet to confirm whether their club captain’s collapse against Bournemouth in the 59th minute was related to another cardiac-related on-field scare, which happened in the Championship Play-Off final in May.
However, with tests still being carried out in hospital, Taylor, who was forced to retire in 2016 with a cardiac condition, said screening processes “can always be better”.
“It is a really sad case and thankfully Tom has got great care where he is now,”the former England batsman told Radio 5 Live. “Screening protocols in whatever sport clearly need to be worked on and improved always.”
Taylor, who had just established himself at No 5 in England’s Test team, had been preparing for a pre-season match with Nottinghamshire against Cambridge Universities when his heart began pumping in a manner he had never felt before. He was later diagnosed with arrhythmogenic right ventricular cardiomyopathy, a rare inherited heart condition, similar to the one that had caused Fabrice Muamba, the former Bolton Wanderers footballer, to suffer cardiac arrest on the pitch four years earlier.
An atrial fibrillation, a heart issue which affects around 1.4 million people in the UK, was cited as the cause of Lockyer’s collapse in May’s promotion-winning victory over Coventry at Wembley. On Saturday, however, the club say Lockyer suffered cardiac arrest. There has been no confirmation that the two incidents are related. “Tom is still undergoing tests and scans, and is awaiting the results before the next steps for his recovery are determined,” the club added.
English football has taken a more case-by-case approach to cardiac issues, with Christian Eriksen allowed to return to the Premier League despite being forced to stop playing in Serie A after his cardiac arrest at Euro 2020.
Lockyer, meanwhile, has previously credited Professor Sanjay Sharma, who chairs the Expert Cardiac Committee of the Football Association (FA), with overseeing his return to the game. Footballing authorities underlined his return to the game over the summer was ultimately a matter for the club.
The FA has previously said of its protocols: “In England, any player that has an abnormal cardiac screen or who develops a cardiac problem would be assessed by a sports cardiologist. We would expect the sports cardiologist to be a member of The FA Cardiac Consensus Panel, a group of experienced sports cardiologists who advise The FA with regard to these issues and provide consultation and screening expertise for our cardiac screening programmes in professional football.”
The FA does oversee around 1,500 cardiac screens in professional football per year, and “provides a central, secure system for storage of screening results, but only authorised club and/or FA medical staff have access to the screening information”.
On June 6, just a fortnight after the play-off final win against Coventry, Lockyer told the Luton Town website he would be “good to go” again in football so long as he follows “doctor’s orders” for “two weeks’ rest without raising the heart rate”.
He collapsed on Saturday just a minute after Dominic Solanke had cancelled out Elijah Adebayo’s third-minute opener for Luton. Premier League Rule L15 states that any match abandoned with the consent of the referee will be replayed, with a date and kick-off time to be arranged by the top-flight’s board.
