Sixteen years after he was injured in an
England Under-21s training session, the 36-year-old’s foundation is supporting people with serious injury or disability and changing how rehab is done
It is a midweek lunchtime in Leicestershire and Matt Hampson cannot remember feeling happier in ages. The sun is shining, the sky is clear and he is outside enjoying a barbecue and a beer with colleagues at his Get Busy Living rehabilitation centre near Melton Mowbray. Those who do not instantly detect paradise have not been a tetraplegic reliant on a ventilator in the age of Covid.
When Hampson sums up the lockdown months as “very difficult for everybody”, he speaks for millions of disabled people and their carers worldwide. “For all of us there has been a feeling of helplessness,” acknowledges the former Leicester and England Under-21 prop, now committed to assisting young men and
Women who, like himself, have had to face the challenge of a life-changing injury. “When you have underlying health conditions it is very scary. It’s been very, very stressful for a lot of people.”