Wycombe’s Matt Bloomfield retires: ‘I forget simple words – it scares me’

When Matt Bloomfield staggered off the pitch at Exeter last August he did not know it would be his final game as a professional footballer. Nor did the 191 visiting Wycombe supporters realise a freak blow to the head and concussion would abruptly end a proud playing career after 558 appearances – all but one for their club. “I was trying to walk to the tunnel and I kept veering right, towards the away fans, when I was trying to head straight,” Bloomfield recalls. “It is quite a narrow tunnel at Exeter and I was bouncing off the walls to get to the changing room. I was sat in the dressing room and the [club] doctor said I was very agitated and irritable. I couldn’t deal with everything. It all unravelled that evening.”

He got home to Felixstowe just as his daughters, Rosie, four, and Mollie, six, were rising. By then Bloomfield had been warned by the club doctor, Bob Sangar, that he might not return to the field. “It affected my mood, it affected my energy levels and I struggled to see the light in the everyday activities that I usually love doing with my girls,” he says. “Things that I usually jumped at doing with them felt like a bit of an effort. They read their stories to me at night and I couldn’t focus on what they were telling me. Sitting with them and them giving me a cuddle with their stories is usually a special time, so I knew I wasn’t right. I thought that it would go within a day or two and a week later I was still feeling the same. I knew it was more serious than some of the other concussions.”

Bloomfield is not the sort to court the limelight but feels “a bit bad” that his parents, Jackie and Steve, and his grandparents were not able to watch him one last time. For Bloomfield, the Carabao Cup first-round