Andros Townsend's Terrifying Incident with Pitch Roller in Thailand
Andros Townsend has called the moment he was run over by a pitch roller in Thailand “terrifying” – and it is hard to disagree.
The 35-year-old former England winger, now playing for PT Prachuap in Thai League 1, was going through his warm-up in Pattani on Saturday when chaos broke out on the touchline. A member of staff appeared to lose control of a heavy roller being used on the surface. Within seconds, Townsend’s left leg was trapped underneath it.
For a split second, it looked horrific. Somehow, he walked away.
Townsend’s leg was briefly caught under the machine, but he escaped serious injury and later came off the bench in a 3-0 win. Speaking about the incident for the first time on Piers Morgan's Football Uncensored, he admitted he still struggles to watch the footage back.
“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. Townsend said he got away with only “bumps and bruises”, a remarkable outcome given what the pictures show.
What made it stranger for him was that the warning signs were there, at least visually. Two rollers, one on either side of the pitch, had already 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, he had his answer.
“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.”
The escape was not just fortune. Townsend explained how he managed to fight his way out from under the roller as it crushed 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,” he said. “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 mind instantly went to his injury history. Townsend has endured major problems with both his left ankle and left knee, each operated on during a career that has taken in Tottenham, Crystal Palace, Everton and Luton, as well as 13 caps for England.
He admitted he feared the worst.
“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.”
Team-mates urged him to head straight for medical checks. He refused. He finished the warm-up, then played.
“They were very surprised that I continued the warm-up. They were telling me to go to the doctor,” he said. The roller scare, he added, is “definitely not going to stop me from continuing.”
Townsend has chosen to meet the absurdity of the incident with a dose of humour. On Instagram, he referenced a recent post where he had compared a sun-drenched away day in Thailand with the more familiar cold of Stoke’s Bet365 Stadium.
“It turns out Stoke away wasn't so bad after all,” he wrote.
From a frozen night in Staffordshire to a rogue roller in Pattani, Townsend has seen enough of football’s extremes to know one thing: he is not done yet.
