Andros Townsend's Terrifying Encounter with a Pitch Roller in Thailand
Andros Townsend has called the moment he was run over by a pitch roller in Thailand “terrifying” – and watching it back still makes him wince.
The 35-year-old former England winger, now playing for PT Prachuap in Thai League 1, was going through his warm-up before a match in Pattani on Saturday when chaos broke out on the touchline. A member of staff appeared to lose control of a heavy pitch roller, which suddenly veered towards the players.
Townsend didn’t have time to get out of the way.
His left leg became trapped under the machine for a brief but horrifying instant. Somehow, he escaped without serious injury. A few minutes later, he was back on his feet, and by the end of the night he had come off the bench in a 3-0 win.
Speaking about the incident for the first time on Piers Morgan's Football Uncensored, Townsend admitted he still can’t quite believe what he sees on the replay.
“Every time I see it, I'm cringing, I'm in disbelief,” he said. “It's horrible to watch back and to see what could have been. Thankfully I was fortunate I did manage to fall onto the floor at the right time, so nothing snapped as the roller went over me.”
He knows how close he came to disaster. Townsend, capped 13 times by England, has already endured a career littered with injury setbacks, and his mind immediately raced to the weakest points in his body.
“I thought, either my left ankle was going to snap or my left knee is going to snap. I thought I was done. I was very fortunate that I was able to hobble away and recover within a few minutes.”
What makes it stranger for him is that he had already clocked something unusual before kick-off. Two rollers, one on each side of the pitch, caught his eye.
“I remember thinking to myself, 'I've never seen that before in my career, what are they doing?' But we got called to warm-up. Didn't think anything of it,” he said.
Seconds later, that curiosity turned into panic. The next time he saw the roller, he was underneath it.
“The next I saw him was when I was literally underneath him and thankfully no serious damage. A couple of bumps and bruises but managed to walk away unscathed, luckily.”
Townsend described how he fought his way clear as the machine bore down on him.
“It was quite heavy, but I was able to kind of lift [it], force it off me. So when it was completely on me, I was getting crushed a little bit. I was able to get my left arm up and relieve some of the pressure, and then I was able to get my team-mates around me who were able to lift it, and I was able to squeeze out. But at that moment where it was crushing my left leg, it was quite terrifying, I must say.”
His team-mates urged him to head straight for medical help. Townsend refused. He finished the warm-up.
“They were very surprised that I continued the warm-up. They were telling me to go to the doctor,” he said, but the winger insisted the incident was “definitely not going to stop me from continuing.”
He later made light of the ordeal on Instagram, poking fun at one of his own recent posts where he had compared a sun-drenched Thai away trip with the notoriously cold and wet visits to Stoke's Bet365 Stadium.
“It turns out Stoke away wasn't so bad after all,” he wrote.
A career that has survived serious injuries and top-flight battles has now added a runaway pitch roller in Pattani to the list. Townsend, somehow, is still walking away.
