NW unites for Young

The talented bowler, in his attempt to try and catch Mark Porter’s skied shot, collided with team-mate Marc Fleming and broke his tibula and fibula; skipper David Scanlon said yesterday that clubs throughout the area have been in contact with him to ask about Young’s condition since the freak and sickening accident.

It’s believed that former Bready man and current Ireland international Boyd Rankin is trying to get some signed Irish shirts and ex-Donemana William Porterfield is also thought to be trying to get some Ireland memorabilia for the club to auction.

“There has been people who I have never spoken to before in the league that have been in contact to see how Ian is and do anything they can do to help out,” stated Scanlon.

“Ourself as a club will be organising some fund raising events for Ian and Burndennett, who were super on Saturday, have also been in contact saying they are organising something for Ian and that’s tremendous.

“Ian is self employed so all the help he can get at this time would be great.”

The Bready skipper also admitted that he and the rest of the squad would have found it difficult to continue their Northern Bank Senior Cup tie and praised Burndennett on their sportsmanship.

“I have been involved in a lot of games when players have collided but this time we knew it was a lot more serious. To be honest I probably couldn’t have played on and Marc Fleming who collided with Ian certainly could not have continued, so Burndennett were great when they offered to abandon the match,” he added.

“They were well in the game but as I have said it was them and the umpires who were happy enough to abandon the tie. Everyone at Burndennett was super and the ambulance was at the ground in no time, which was great to see.”

Bready were due to face Donemana in the Long’s Supervalu Senior One on Sunday but like so many games in recent weeks the game was a wash out, something which didn’t annoy Scanlon.

“Although we were all ready to go, I know that everyone wasn’t really in the form to be playing cricket.

“However while we sat in the changing room we all talked about what Ian would want us to do, he’s a fighter and with us sitting joint top of the league, in the Senior Cup quarter-final and semi-final of the Faughan Valley Cup, he certainly would want us to go out and make sure that we gave our all to try and win those important games, which are coming up for us.”

Scanlon also confirmed that only for some late night surgery things could have been a whole lot worse for Young.

“I was told that the surgeon who did the operation in the early hours of Sunday morning said that if he had not been called, then there would have been a chance that Ian would have had to get the leg amputated because he burst a vein, it was that serious.”