Fit to Busst: There is Life after a Career-ending football injury.

Last year’s horrific injury to the Arsenal footballer, Eduardo da Silva, was high profile because it occurred during a televised Premiership match, but the kind of clumsy, ill-timed tackle by Birmingham's Martin Taylor that broke the Brazilian-born, Croatian international striker's ankle and shin takes place week in, week out on the thousands of park pitches around the country on a Sunday morning.

Eduardo is poised to return to the Arsenal senior ranks. For those who suffer such injuries it is the start of a long process of physical and mental rehabilitation, but they should be inspired by the story of David Busst, best-known for being the victim of the worst injury ever witnessed in the professional game when, playing for Coventry City at Manchester United's famous Old Trafford stadium on Easter Monday, 1996, his right leg was shattered after being hit on either side by two United players in a freak collision.

So severe was the impact that Busst was left with a large, gaping hole in his leg, while his bone, now at right angles, stuck out. Blood spilled on to the pitch and United's goalkeeper, Peter Schmeichel, was physically sick at the sight of a stricken Busst. There then followed an amazing 22 operations, ten in the first 12 days as the wounds became infected, a muscle exploded and a tendon transfer was required. In the end it was the MRSA bug that did for Busst's professional career.

Twelve years' on and the former defender, now 40, works at Coventry'sAcademy and in the club's community football programme, walks with a  slight limp, but still plays the occasional game of football.  He can look back on the accident philosophically, but at the time the experience was truly disturbing.

"I spent much of the first fortnight out of my head because of all the general anaesthetics and operations," he recalls. "They were mainly to clean out the infection caused by the open wounds and this meant they were struggling to heal. I lost a lot of my tendons, the muscle exploded on the outside of my leg and I had foot drop which means, to this day, I can't get my foot under a ball to chip. I'd lost all my tendons bar two, but one was from my big toe, which is one of the strongest, and that was transferred to alleviate the foot drop. Even so, at one stage they told me I could lose my leg from the knee down."

Stuart Watson is a Consultant Plastic Surgeon at the South Manchester University Hospital NHS Trust based at Withingshaw Hospital. Back in 1996 he got to work on Busst at the now removed Withington Hospital, and remembers the case well.

"It sticks in the memory, not just because it happened in a Premiership football match, but because of the extraordinary extent of David's injuries, and his tremendous bravery during the first two weeks when he was under a great deal of pain," Watson recalls. "He revealed a remarkable spirit. His was what we call a high energy injury, common in motor cycle accidents. A bone coming out of the skin on soil is always vulnerable to infection. I saw him within 48 hours of the injury. He'd first had his bone set at an orthopaedic unit at Hope Hospital. I then had to clear out a great deal of dead tissue. It was the loss of muscle, and then the continual infections that were the major problems.

"A plastic surgeon's job is primarily to help the management of soft tissues. We'll only see one in a hundred of broken leg victims, and very few sports injuries. David's case remains stand out. Eduardo's, although obviously severe, seems more straight-forward, and the fact that there was no open wound means that he will not face anything like the kind of problems David did."

Even as recently as 1996 the MRSA bug was not as commonly known as it is today. Busst would become one of the first, high-profile victims. "I was quarantined for a while in hospital," he admits. "There was no cure and, of course, people have died from it. I spent half my time washing myself and my hair. Eventually it cleared up but the damage to the muscle was so severe by then because the bug had prevented it from healing that my career was over."

There then followed a long process of rehabilitation. "Most of it was geared towards building my muscles back, and this meant lots of sports massages to counter the massive swelling, and a great deal of leg strengthening exercises. I had a pin inserted in my leg, a brace on my foot for a while, and I'd visit the hospital in Manchester three times a week for the first two years.

"The trick is not to set your targets too high at first. Severe fractures happen all the time at a local level in football. I know because I get many victims writing to me asking for advice. I always reply telling them the same thing. Make your goals small and achievable. Never say you'll be back next month. Instead aim to walk this month, jogging the following month, then maybe kicking a ball the month after that, and so on."

Handing out such advice has played its part in Busst's mental recovery, too. "I see it as a tremendous positive if I can help others come through a similar experience to mine," he says. "I'm not bitter about what happened to me. Of course I think about the money I could have earned, and the opportunities lost, but I was incredibly fortunate to be able to play a sport I loved professionally for a while, and a new chapter opened up in my life when that one closed. I got over it and moved on."

Still, when he saw the Eduardo injury on TV Busst felt moved to write to the Arsenal player. "It's probably the closest injury to mine and I knew what he was going to go through," he explains. "Luckily his was not an open injury and it seems he has made a a full recovery. I just wrote to wish him the best of luck. I received 4,500 letters from the world of football and the general public, and it meant a great deal to me during my time of rehabilitation."