Grimley’s incredible resilience In the aftermath of Armagh’s win against Kerry, coach Ciaran McKeever singled out Niall Grimley for special mention. “He is just an incredible man,” said McKeever. “He's been through a lot this year.
Niall has been through a lot these past couple of years.” It has been a hellish two years for the man from Madden. Two years ago, during an in-house training game, Grimley suffered a three-column fracture of the C6 vertebrae in his neck.
The C7 vertebrae was also fractured. The discs, ligaments and tendons in the area were destroyed. Crucially, the spinal cord to which damage is life-changing and irreversible, was unharmed.
Yet that still didn’t reduce the terror and trepidation ransacking Grimley’s mind when he was lying in the Royal Victoria Hospital. “You are staring at the ceiling thinking what the hell have I done and what the hell is there to come?” he said to Cahair O’Kane in ‘The Irish News’ last year. “At the time, that weekend, there was no mention of football (from the doctors).
It was just, right, we need to make sure this fella’s gonna be ok to have a normal life.” The operation involved removing the destroyed discs from his neck and replacing them with artificial plates, and then inserting a metal cage between the two broken vertebrae. The risks that come with such surgery are potentially catastrophic, from damage to the spinal cord to losing your voicebox.
The cage and plates are in there permanently n.