• Laura Wareham collapses twice at game • ‘I was angry at being taken off’ she says

This article is more than 5 years old

This article is more than 5 years old

A goalkeeper for Newcastle United Women played on after suffering a suspected broken neck in a collision with a team-mate.

Laura Wareham suffered the injury after only 15 minutes of Newcastle’s match against Bradford City on Sunday after she and the defender Kate Brooks combined to stop a Bradford forward scoring.

Wareham, 21, played on for five or six minutes of the eventual 3-2 defeat before being substituted but only because pain in her ribs had left her unable to kick the ball, she said.

She then collapsed twice, once after coming off and once in the dressing room at the end of the game at Northumbria University.

“It was crazy and really scary, with the doctors talking about me potentially needing surgery,” Wareham told the Newcastle Chronicle.

“They took me off – which I was quite angry about as I wanted to keep playing – but sat on the bench I felt sick and then at half-time the physio went to walk with me into the changing rooms and I collapsed.

“One moment I was walking and then next I started hearing everything like it was in the distance and I felt week, and then I woke up with everyone around me. I’m told I was out for about a minute, with my eyes rolling back into my head and my lips going a bit blue.”

Wareham, a sports science student, has broken her neck playing in goal before, in 2011, which put her out for a year.

After she revealed her previous injury to the team physio she was taken to hospital by ambulance.

An initial x-ray showed she had broken her neck between the first and second vertebrae at the base of the skull, but a subsequent Cat scan revealed no breaks.

She has now returned home to Jarrow and will see a neurologist next week to determine how bad the injury is.

“If it is just ligament damage I should be back in the new year,” Wareham said.

The Manchester City goalkeeper Bert Trautmann is helped off the field after famously breaking his neck in the 1956 FA Cup final. Photograph: Daily Mail / Rex Features

“I played on and saved a shot and then got a sharp pain through my ribs and back and went off. I had no pain in my neck.”

The injury is in a different place to the break she suffered three years ago and the Newcastle College student is keen to get back playing, tweeting yesterday: “I’m coming home my X-rays have been sent to the neurologists, I have a hard collar on&go back Tuesday! Can I train tonight @NUWFCOfficial?”

Wareham is not the first goalkeeper to suffer a serious neck injury and play on. The late Manchester City goalkeeper Bert Trautmann is best remembered for playing on after breaking his neck in the 1956 FA Cup final win over Birmingham.

A Newcastle United Women’s FC spokesman said: “It was hard to see Laura go down with a second neck injury in just a few years, but we know what a strong person and strong character Laura is, she’ll be back.”