Flanagan's Football Files

There has much been written & also spoken about the EFL play-off finals, what with the 'Spy-Gate' issue, which resulted in Southampton being stripped of their place in the final, so ahead of these games it was nice to hear of someone being raised & honoured for their actions off the pitch.

Pippa Sharman was leaving Reading's away match at Luton Town in 2022 when she saw David Norman crash his car as he suffered a cardiac arrest.

Sharman, a police officer who lives in Cholsey, Oxfordshire, said her training kicked in at the time and it was 'wonderful' to know that her intervention had saved Norman's life.

Recalling the events of 2022, she explained to people how she had left Kenilworth Road Stadium, home of the 'Hatters' following what was one of the 'most boring games she had every seen' and she was walking back to the car, when the car that Dave was in, shot across the road and T-boned another car.

She went on to explain, how the father of three, was 'very clearly not breathing', with the help of another person, pulled him from the car and gave him CPR and thankfully he survived.

She has attended the Championship play-off final on Saturday between Hull City and Middlesbrough to see tens of thousands of fans packed in to watch their respective teams play for the chance of Premier League football next season.

A stand at Wembley had been temporarily named in her honour during the English Football League (EFL) play-off finals on Saturday, Sunday and Monday, which saw a collective attendance figure of around 200,000.

The British Heart Foundation, said 'every year more than 40,000 people have an out-of-hospital cardiac arrest across the UK but that less than one in 10 survive.'

Their Every Minute Matters campaign, which has been widely promoted by the EFL, has resulted in more than 520,000 people starting to learn CPR using its free online tools.

Whatever happened in the playoff matches, we already know one of the heroes & one of the winners which tells the tale of the warmth of football supporters at all levels.

Jimmy Flanagan