A footballer with a broken foot has told how he scored the winner after coming off the substitutes' bench with five minutes to go in a local derby.
Ian Williams came on as Pontlliw were drawing 1-1 with Pontarddulais Town in the Carmarthenshire Association Div 1.
Despite his fractured right foot, the 29-year-old ex-soldier beat a defender to a cross to head home the winner.
"There was no intention of me playing," he said. "It's football. I love it that much."
He had been off sick for a week after cracking his foot during a tackle in a previous game.
But he swapped his plaster cast for a removable plastic boot-like cast just before the match.
"It was more or less my first touch of the game... I jumped higher than the defender and headed it in"
He sat on the bench as one of two substitutes in the under-strength side and the game was still a tie when the former lance corporal in the Welsh Guards felt the need to take to the field.
He said: "I said to the manager, get me on, just to make it look like we had a full side. I said we had nothing to lose.
"It was just a last throw of the dice. It was like a comedy. You can just imagine it. The other side couldn't believe I went on.
Village
"It was more or less my first touch of the game.
"The ball got crossed over. I jumped higher than the defender and headed it in."
But he paid a price for his moment of glory. As landed back on the ground after leaping into the air, the pain made him physically sick.
"The manager said 'well done, that's the best 90 seconds you've ever done' then took me off the park."
He added: "I won't be doing it again."
He played Welsh league football until last season, and is back at work on light duties while his foot heals.
But his exploits have already done the rounds in the village.
Ironically, in the past three weeks he has moved to Pontarddulais, where he played for the team as a teenager, but plans to stay with his village side.
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