Welsh prop Roger Addison dies after 44 years in hospital

By David Kent for MailOnline
Updated: 15:34 EST, 31 March 2010

Roger Addison, the Welsh prop who broke his neck in a game in 1966, has died after 44 years in hospital.

Addison was just 21 when, in a game for Pontypool, he was left paralysed from the
neck down after a scrum collapsed.

It was initially feared he would not survive the first three weeks, but he defied medical
opinion in his time at Stoke Mandeville Hospital, where his guests included film stars Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor.

Pontypool RFC spokesman Bob Jeremiah, who visited him in hospital almost every week for 44 years, said: ‘He couldn’t move from the neck down and could only whisper so we had to lip read.

‘But he still loved the game and had a photograph signed by the Wales team hanging over his bed.’

He died aged 65 at the University Hospital of Wales, Cardiff.