Northern Ireland team prepares for first ever Transplant Football World Cup

ORGAN donation can seem like the happy ending for patients after years of dialysis and waiting lists, but fully reclaiming their old lives can be a different story.

This month, the first ever Transplant Football World Cup takes place in Italy and teams from both the Republic and Northern Ireland are competing.

Among the Northern Ireland team is player/manager Orla Smyth (45) from Belfast and team captain David Gourley (39) from Newtownabbey.

Orla currently chairs Transplant Sport Northern Ireland, a charity which encourages donor recipients to embrace sport.

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After a failed kidney transplant failed in 2004, she received a successful match three years later.

“I was very sporty before I got sick. Then I was on dialysis for four years and sport was just completely out of the question,” she said.

“For me, getting back into sport was such a highlight of getting my life back.

“When you’re waiting on a transplant, you’re in limbo. You’re not living, you’re existing until you get that call.

“I know a lot of our guys are the same, it’s trying to bring that normality back. That’s why our charity exists.”

She said transplant football remains relatively new, with certain adjustments such as no slide tackles and less physical contact during games to reduce the risk of injury.

That said, her team will be thrown into a highly competitive group with the host nations Italy, Australia, Chile and Spain.

“The only reason all 15 of us are together is because we’ve had a heart, liver or kidney transplant,” she said.

“We’re all from very different backgrounds and social circles but we all have a special bond.

“That’s because you share a very common outlook on life, to make the best of if because we’ve all been given that second chance by somebody donating their organ.”

David received his transplant five years ago, just months after doctors told him he had “the blood of a 90-year-old.”

“I was playing football on Friday nights and cramping really badly, I just thought it was getting older and trying to keep up with the young ones,” he said.

With a kidney function of just 8%, he was told he had probably been living with kidney failure for years.

Expecting a wait of up to four years without a living kidney donor, he was stunned by how many people offered including his mother and friends he hadn’t seen in 15 years.

Four months later, he was called at 2am to be informed of a deceased donor.

“All I was told was that it was an 18-year-old girl from England and that I had to come to the hospital right away,” he said.

Although his wait for a match was relatively quick, he said the mental strain was worse than his physical symptoms.

“You’re going through a hard time where you’re thinking death could be an option if a donor doesn’t come quick enough,” he said.

“Obviously, it impacts your family. My wife and kids were having a terrible time over it.

“It just affects absolutely everything you’re doing. People are treating you differently, you just want to get back to some sort of normality.”

As well as the hope it offers the players, he hopes the Transplant World Cup will encourage more people to consider donation.

“I now realise people shouldn’t be as scared of transplants. They don’t use anyone with underlying illnesses and make sure they’re fully compatible,” he said.

“The highest of checks are done and I don’t think that’s said enough.

“My brothers didn’t get tested (as a potential match) because of what I would call Dr Google. You can read the most negative things online and it puts people off.

“But I now have a lot of family members that have put themselves on the family register.”