Andros Townsend survives pitch roller accident to lead PT Prachuap victory
Andros Townsend has endured some grim moments in his career, but nothing quite like this.
The 35-year-old PT Prachuap forward was run over by a pitch roller before an away game in Pattani in Thai League 1 – and still ended up playing in a 3–0 victory.
Townsend was going through the warm-up when chaos broke out on the touchline. A member of staff appeared to lose control of a heavy roller, which veered towards the former Premier League winger and caught the lower left side of his body.
His reflexes saved him.
"Luckily, I was fortunate enough to manage to throw myself to the ground at exactly the right moment, so that nothing was broken when the roller went over me," he told the programme "Football Uncensored". Minor knocks. No fractures. A near miss of the most sickening kind.
Every replay still shakes him.
"Every time I watch it, it sends shivers down my spine. I can hardly believe it. It's terrible to watch it again and realise what could have happened."
“The next time I saw it, I was underneath it”
Townsend had actually clocked the roller earlier, before the warm-up even began.
"I remember thinking: I've never seen that in my career before, what are they doing? But we were called out for the warm-up. I didn't think anything more of it," he said.
Then came the horror moment.
"The next time I saw it, I was literally underneath it. Fortunately, there were no serious injuries. A few bumps and bruises, but I got away unscathed."
For a player with his injury history, the panic was instant. The 13-cap England international has already had operations on his left knee and left ankle during a long career that has taken in Tottenham Hotspur, Crystal Palace and Luton Town.
"I thought either my left ankle was going to break or my left knee. I thought I was done for. I was very lucky that I was able to limp away from it and recover within a few minutes," he admitted.
Fighting the weight of the roller
Even while trapped, Townsend tried to battle his way out from under the machine.
"It (the roller) was pretty heavy, but I somehow managed to lift it and push it away from me," he recalled. "When it was then completely on top of me, I was getting a little crushed. I was able to lift my left arm and relieve some pressure that way. Then I managed to gather my team-mates around me, who were able to lift the roller, and I could wriggle out. But at the moment it crushed my left leg, I have to say, it was pretty frightening."
His team-mates wanted him off the pitch and into the treatment room. Townsend refused.
"My team-mates were very surprised that I carried on with the warm-up. They told me to go to the doctor," he said.
He carried on, played, and was involved late on as PT Prachuap cruised to a 3–0 win. The club do not expect the incident to affect his move to Southeast Asia or the remainder of his career. As Townsend put it, it will "definitely not stop him from carrying on".
A near miss – and a joke at Stoke’s expense
Once the dust settled, Townsend did what modern footballers do: he went to Instagram.
He referenced an earlier post in which he had jokingly compared away pitches in Thailand to the notoriously unforgiving conditions at Stoke City’s Bet365 Stadium. This time, he captioned his update with a wry line:
"Away at Stoke wasn't that bad after all."
For a man who has already fought back from serious injuries, surviving a rogue pitch roller might just be the strangest escape of his career – and a reminder that in Thai League 1, the real danger isn’t always the opposition.
