RKC supporters have had an unreal Saturday evening. Their goalkeeper and cult hero Etienne Vaessen collided hard with Ajax player Brian Brobbey. The goalkeeper collapsed and lay motionless on the field. Lucas Paulides was in the stadium and saw the panic among the players and staff. He held his breath as Vaessen was resuscitated. “You can tell by how someone is lying that something is really wrong.”
Emotions flew in all directions in the Mandemakers Stadium during the match against Ajax. The tension and hope for a good result for the Waalwijkers turned into fear after 84 minutes. “Football players are often hit in the head by a knee or elbow, but here it was immediately clear that something was really wrong,” says supporter Lucas Paulides.
“When the resuscitation started, the entire stadium fell silent.”
He has been at the Mandemakers Stadium for 18 years and had never experienced anything like this on the field. And he hopes never to do that again. “It was immediately shocking, but when the doctor started resuscitating, the entire stadium fell silent.”
According to Lucas, the stadium was in ‘collective shock’. He thought it was a strange sensation to hear 7,500 spectators suddenly become so quiet. “There was a nasty kind of tension in the stands.”
“Some people cried and some didn’t want to see it.”
RKC players stood around their unconscious goalkeeper to shield him, other teammates could not stand it and walked away emotionally. “You saw the same thing in the stands, everyone reacts differently to something as intense as resuscitation. Some people had to cry, others really looked away, others tried to catch a glimpse in the hope of seeing positive signals.”
After several minutes of treatment on the field, the goalkeeper was taken to the catacombs to loud applause from the audience and the players left the field. “Then the long wait and uncertainty began,” says the RKC supporter. “Everyone was on their phones looking for information, hoping for good news.”
“He’s a bit of a cult hero, everyone knows him.”
The match had already been temporarily stopped and shortly afterwards was permanently stopped because the players were too shaken to continue playing. “Etienne Vaessen has been at the club for nine years, he is a bit of a cult hero. The fact that something like this happens to him makes the impact even greater, I think. Everyone knows him because he has been at RKC for so long.”
Afterwards it turned out that the RKC goalkeeper did not have heart failure and the KNVB protocol was followed by preventive resuscitation. “As a supporter, I think that RKC deserves compliments for how the speaker calmly kept the audience informed in the stadium. But also that our club chairman was able to provide relief so quickly by telling us that Vaessen was conscious,” says Lucas.
“I hope he will be fit in goal again soon.”
The match between RKC and Ajax will probably have to be played later, but supporter Lucas is not concerned with that. “I think it is much more important that Etienne Vaessen is fit again in goal and can make a nice step in his football career.”
Here’s how the collision happened: