A MAN who suffered a cardiac arrest while playing walking football in Caldicot has spoken of how his teammates saved his life using CPR.

Now, he is backing a campaign urging people to learn the lifesaving technique. 

Alan Owen, 51, collapsed on the sidelines of a match at Caldicot Leisure Centre in April last year.

It was thanks to his quick-thinking teammates who were trained in CPR, plus the leisure centre staff, that he survived.  

Mr Owen was at a walking football tournament last April with his 16-year-old son Jacob.

South Wales Argus:

Mr Owen had played one game for his team Carmarthen Town and was on the sidelines watching when he collapsed.

Luckily, the man he was talking to at the time, Martin Power, was a police officer who knew CPR.  

“I don’t remember any of this, but I was told afterwards that Martin realised I had stopped breathing,” said Mr Owen.  

“So he turned me over on my back and one of our other football players who is ex-military, a guy called Sean Golder, came running over.  

“He had had CPR training as part of his military training, so he started compressions. Our manager then phoned 999.” 

They performed CPR for around eight minutes until they were finally able to successfully restart Mr Owen's heart using the centre’s defibrillator.

Minutes later, paramedics and air ambulances arrived and he was taken to hospital in Cardiff.  

A couple of days later Mr Owen was diagnosed with the heart condition hypertrophic cardiomyopathy -  a disease of the heart muscle, where the muscle wall of your heart becomes thickened.

He has since been fitted with an implantable cardioverter defibrillator (ICD), which will help control any potentially life-threatening heart rhythms. 

Now Mr Owen, from Carmarthen, is supporting the British Heart Foundation this Heart Month as the charity encourages people to learn CPR in just 15 minutes using its free innovative training tool, RevivR.   

Every year around 2,800 people suffer an out-of-hospital cardiac arrest in Wales, with only one in 20 surviving. Immediate CPR and defibrillation can more than double the chances of survival in some cases.​

Rhodri Thomas, head of BHF Cymru, said: “What happened to Alan must have been incredibly traumatic for all involved.

"Luckily it ended well but it could so easily have been different.

“CPR only takes 15 minutes to learn with RevivR. I urge you do it today, as it could be the most important lesson you ever learn.”    

To support the British Heart Foundation this Heart Month and find out more about RevivR, visit bhf.org.uk/heartmonth