I was scared to catch the ball until Fab gave me a hand
LEWIS’ DEBT TO HAMMERS No1 LUKASZ
EXETER V FOREST GREEN 3PM
LEWIS THOMAS was once afraid to catch the ball. Now he is the country’s clean-sheet king – and he owes it all to Lukasz Fabianski.
The Forest Green Rovers keeper has Raynaud’s Disease, a rare condition which makes your fingers go numb in the cold.
But the 22-year-old is thriving in League Two and warms up to face second-placed Exeter today with his team in top spot on the back of him keeping five clean sheets in a row last month.
And it is all down to an act of kindness from West Ham keeper Fabianski, right, who used to be his team-mate at Swansea.
Thomas said: “Fabs was absolutely brilliant with me – he took me under his wing. I suffer with Raynaud’s. When it gets cold my fingers go numb and I can’t feel them, which obviously isn’t very good for a goalkeeper. When it first started it was a big problem. I found myself not catching the ball and not making saves because of it. But he told me about some special gloves that might help.
“I came in the next morning and he had six pairs waiting for me. I tried them and they helped, and now I use these inner gloves which are like a fleece material, to keep them warm. I’ve got a lot to thank him for. The way he was in training as well, he was an absolute animal. It showed me what you needed to do to get to the top. My record might be a bit better than his this season but I’ve a long way to get to his level.” Thomas spent 13 years at Swansea, excelling in youth football but never playing for the first team. He left to join Forest Green in June 2018. This season he has helped them keep more clean sheets in all domestic competitions than any other team in the top four divisions. Thomas added: “I’ve played in all but three of our league games and we kept two clean sheets in them as well so it’s been a team effort. I can’t take all the credit.
“We’ve looked solid and we’ve won everything in the air. I think we’ve only allowed a maximum of three or four shots a game. For me, it’s perfect. Does it feel quite easy? Yes, it does in a way.
“Now we have a big game against Exeter. First v second. We want to put a marker down and show that we deserve to be where we are in the league.”
He said of his time at Swansea: “They kept bringing in keepers from abroad and I was getting frustrated and down. I decided I wanted to get out of there as quickly as I could. Prove myself somewhere else.”