One minute I was about to sign for Arsenal, the next I was fighting for my life in hospital

HOW SHOCKING DISEASE ENDED RISING STAR’S GUNNERS DREAM

JAMIE BROOKS should have been a household name by now — immortalised forever as part of Arsenal’s greatestever Invincibles’ side.

You might not have heard of him. But the former striker, now 36, could have been bracketed alongside such greats as Thierry Henry, Dennis Bergkamp and Patrick Vieira.

Or even Robert Pires – whom he was earmarked to replace.

But the reason why Jamie Brooks never fulfilled that dream lies in a set of circumstances that snatched him from the steps of the Emirates to an intensive care unit where he was fighting for his life just TWO DAYS before he was due to join Arsene Wenger’s all-conquering squad.

Brooks broke through into the first-team of his hometown club Oxford United towards the end of the 2001-02 campaign where he was soon scoring and coming to the attention of bigger clubs.

He said: “I scored on my debut for Oxford as we were relegated to League

Two, having scored 30odd for the reserves as a 17-year-old.

“The next season, I had two months out with a knee injury, but still managed to score

12 and was attracting a bit of attention.

“So much so, in fact, that the boss Mark

Wright had a call from

Arsenal at Christmas, offering £250,000 for me.

“The chairman, Firoz Kassam, said, ‘We won’t let him go, we’ll keep playing him and every time he scores a goal, his price goes up’.

“Reading were interested, as were Celtic, but Arsenal’s chief scout Steve Rowley was the one who’d seen me play. He was feeding information back to Arsene Wenger, but the manager had never seen me play in the flesh.

“So a game was arranged between an Oxford XI and an Arsenal XI at their training ground just before the end of the season, so he could see me. I was on the left of midfield, up against Lee Dixon.

“Francis Jeffers was playing, Yoshi Inamoto,

Edu, Jermaine Pennant.

“I had a blinder and went past Lee Dixon three or four times.

“We lost 7-1, but I scored our goal and, as we were coming off, Phil

Gray, who I played up front with, said, ‘Well done, lad, you’ve just sealed a move to Arsenal’.

“It was all a bit of blur.

Then I was invited to go to their training ground, to meet the manager and have lunch with him.

“The players signed a shirt with ‘Brooks 11’ on the back. I remember walking up to the restaurant, seeing Ray Parlour, Tony Adams and Martin Keown. We sat at the manager’s table and I was there looking out of the window when I had a tap on the shoulder and the manager says, ‘How’s the boy?’.

“All I remember thinking was, ‘Christ, he’s tall’. We had lunch and he said to me, ‘We’ve seen you play a lot, we’ve scouted around Europe, but we love the way you play on the front foot and the natural ability you have. We’re speaking to your chairman, we will get a deal sorted out. We’ll put you into the reserves and we want you to model yourself on Robert Pires. We want you to sign for us in the summer’.

“There’s no other place I wanted to be. Even if there were other clubs interested, I wasn’t. That was it for me – Arsenal.”

Brooks left the London Colney training base walking on air. He was due to return for tests three days after Oxford’s final game of the season against Darlington.

He said: “In the week before the game, I picked up a chesty cold. Ian Atkins had replaced Mark Wright. He told me not to push myself I said, ‘I want to play’.

“I felt rough on the day, but I played and scored. After the match, I went to pick up a paper. I parked and went to cross the road. My legs just gave way halfway across.

“Luckily, there were no cars coming. I picked myself up and wondered what I’d tripped over.

“Later, I drove my parents to a social club. I didn’t drink then, but I had a massive headache. My mum told me to have some food, so I had scampi and chips.

“I drove home and my feet went numb from the ankle down.

“I told my parents something was wrong and then I was in excruciating pain in my lower back and the top of my thighs. I was burning up. All the nerves in my body were closing down.

“One by one, they were shutting down. It was paralysing me. I went to hospital in a taxi. I

was discharged on Sunday morning, told I had a 48-hour virus.

“But I was nauseous through the day and in tears with pain. Within one minute of the doctor turning up at my house, I was straight back into hospital.

“Eventually, they worked out I had Guillain-Barre syndrome. Your nerves effectively eat themselves. Your body turns on you.

“There were about 10 doctors around my bed, who told my mum I was going to intensive care. I was gasping for breath and they put me into a coma.

“Three days later, I woke up. My whole body was paralysed. I was still in pain, only conscious. They were giving me morphine.

“The machines were breathing for me. I was hallucinating. I couldn’t speak or move.

“Three days before, I’d played for Oxford, scored a goal in front of 10,000 people, then next thing I knew I was fighting for my life.

“They told my parents, ‘This is 50-50. We don’t know if he’ll get through this’. If I hadn’t been so fit, I wouldn’t have.

“I was like that for 69 days. They changed the drugs and I ended up on horse tranquiliser Fentanyl. It took the pain away, then I’d wake up in pain again. I had a Hickman line put direct into my heart, so they could pump drugs more quickly. All my veins had packed up.

“Then, my little finger twitched – the first sign of my nerves regrowing. Markus Babbel had it at Liverpool, but it only affected his legs. He got in contact with me, sending a letter, but I was in a horrendous state.”

Brooks lost three stone, but couldn’t walk. He had to re-learn. With the help of Oxford physio Neil Sullivan, he eventually returned to first-team action.

But his body could not cope with the demands and he could hardly walk for two days.

He said: “Looking back and thinking a club like that wanted me, Arsenal were the team any neutral wanted to watch because of the way they played. So I must have had something about me.

“And they did get in touch. On the morning of their FA Cup Final against Chelsea, a bunch of bright red flowers turned up at my intensive care unit.

“It had been sent by Arsene Wenger and the note read, ‘Get well soon, Jamie, we’re all thinking of you. We’ll see you soon’.

“If I’d signed that summer I’d have had two seasons playing alongside some of the greatest players they’ve ever had.

“I struggled with that thought for a while. When I turned 30, it hit me and I went through a time when I was depressed and had to have counselling. I don’t think I got over the illness properly.

“So, yes, it could have been me. But I’m still alive, I’ve got three beautiful lads – the medics said I might not even have children.

“I’m back on track with a steady job and I’ve come to terms with it.

“And any time I think about what might have been, I’ve got a shirt on the wall to look at.”

‘My body was was paralysed.

I had turned into

a physical wreck’