Retired NRL star Orford reveals near-death experience

Former Rugby League star Matt Orford says he was only minutes from dying after suffering complications from hip surgery last month.

In an interview with News Corp, the Manly Sea Eagles premiership-winning halfback has revealed how a blood clot that formed on his leg, eventually led to a stoke that almost claimed his life.

One week after undergoing hip-resurfacing surgery, the 38-year-old was in the toilet of his room at the Mater Hospital in North Sydney, when he suddenly collapsed.

“I put my crutch next to the toilet but on the wrong side where I couldn’t reach it because of the hip,” Orford told the Daily Telegraph.

“I went to get up and my body couldn’t move, I couldn’t speak. My whole right side was paralysed. My left side was working but I couldn’t actually reach the assist button because it was on the other side, my right side.”

Orford says in his desperate attempts to call for help he ended up slipping off the rails in the bathroom and splitting his head open, rendering himself unconscious.

“I fell on the hip which had surgery and I was in that much pain. The aftermath was that I refractured it, and the pelvis.

After waking in a lather of sweat and covered in blood, Orford finally managed to drag himself to the shower where was able to summon help.

He was then rushed to the nearby Royal North Shore Hospital, where doctors frantically tried to contact his father to get permission to operate on the retired league player.

“They had to tell him the risk of getting the clot out. If it ruptured, it was game over. I think they had half an hour to get that procedure done.”

“That stroke unit team, there are only six in Australia funded by the public system between Monday and Friday. If this happened on Saturday, they wouldn’t have been clocked on,” he said.

Orford remains in hospital where he is set to undergo surgery to close the hole in his heart that the clot passed through.

Nicknamed Ox, the 38-year-old led Manly to their 40-0 win over Melbourne in the 2008 NRL grand final.

The former City Origin halfback played 249 top grade games in a career that spanned 12 years with Northern Eagles, Melbourne, Manly, Bradford and Canberra.

He retired in 2011.