Ethan Walker: The boy with the unbreakable spirit

In the coming weeks, we’ll hear stories of the Tartan Army on the move.

There will be some epic yarns about Scotland fans making their way to Munich for 14 June, when Steve Clarke’s men take on the host nation in the Euro 2024 opener.

Of all the folk who’ll descend on Germany, it’s unlikely any will have a narrative as mind-blowingly inspirational as Ethan Walker, an 18-year-old footballer from Huntly.

On 1 June, Ethan will leave Hampden Park and set off for Munich by bike with three others, a 1,200km odyssey that would be a mighty challenge for the strongest of the strong but is something else entirely for a teenager who is lucky to be alive.

Last autumn, while in the early stages of a football scholarship at a college in New York State, Ethan was hit by a car and left with catastrophic injuries.

Right pulmonary contusion, right scapular fracture, fractured pelvis, skull base fracture, left hand fracture, face lacerations, dysphagia and nerve damage, right leg multi-ligament and tibial plateau fracture, subarachnoid hemorrhage, left cerebellar contusion.

In layman’s terms, he was fighting for his life and, for a brief moment, the odds did not look good.

To look at him now, smiling and joking about the ordeal and giddy with excitement about the bike ride to come, you couldn’t know any of this.

The positivity pours out of him, which is remarkable given the trauma of what he and his family have been through.

“Football’s my pride and joy,” he says. “I was playing with Huntly under-18s when I got a scholarship in America.

"I went there last summer and started five of our six games. I settled in amazingly.”

What does he remember of the fateful day?

His breakfast, his shower, his protein shake. He went to college for PE class, then the gym. Back in the dorm, he helped cut his friend’s hair…and that’s it.

His mum, Jaclyn, remembers a whole lot more. The mad dash to Edinburgh Airport, the flight to New York and the drive to Buffalo County Hospital.

“I just wanted to get there, hold his hand and tell them that he was going to be all right," she says.

"I was picking up bits of information. He’d been hit by a car doing about 60mph [it was later deemed a no-fault accident].

“I was just in shock when I saw him. He was hooked up to absolutely everything, wires coming out of his brain.

"The first neurologist I spoke to in the trauma unit was lovely, but most of what he said went over my head.

"There was another doctor who said that he didn't think Ethan would make it. And he was asked very politely not to ever say anything like that again. Or maybe not so politely, I'm not sure.”

Surgery was the scariest thing. “They said the surgery could result in him dying and I think that was the first time Paul [Ethan’s dad] saw me crying the whole time we were in hospital," his mum recalls.

Jaclyn knew her son was a fighter and that’s exactly what he did. He spent nearly two months in hospital, unconscious initially, before gradually coming round.

Nicknamed Baby Blue by nurses, he now became Baby Boy Blue once they saw the colour of his eyes.

Between the trauma unit and the intensive care ward it was a long, long road. For six weeks, Jaclyn slept in a chair by his side, with Ethan’s dad and sister nearby.

He was being fed through a tube and his speech was hushed and almost indecipherable.

“He was in the corridor with older patients who were trying to get exercise,” Jaclyn recalls. “He was saying to them, ‘gonna give you a race?’, but they didn’t understand him.

"He was so weak and still quite ill, but you could see his determination to get better. And he was funny. He had a feeding tube, but all he wanted was a burger.”

Ethan’s spirit shone through. His parents never stopped worrying, but they made that journey home and the recovery began in earnest.

His speech slowly improved, his co-ordination came together better than before, the tubes came out and he got that burger.

He was advised to use a walking frame, but that was never happening. He used crutches instead, as a footballer would.

And then he paid a visit to Professor Gordon Mackay, a world-renowned surgeon based in Dunblane. Mackay had been on the books with Rangers in the Graeme Souness era, but sports surgery is where he has excelled.

“When Ethan came to see me, he still had his feeding tube," Professor Mackay says.

"He had all those other injuries, which were horrendous, plus he had injuries in his knee that were the equivalent of five ACLs. We had to rebuild all his ligaments.

“It’s absolutely ridiculous the way he’s bounced back. After three months, he told me he could jog and I said ‘don’t be silly’. Sure enough, he jogged on the spot.

"Every time I see him, he asks when will he play football again. I can’t promise him anything, but from there we came up with up this idea of cycling to the Euros."

There’s going to be four of them leaving from Hampden - the footballer, the surgeon, the film-maker (Martyn Robertson, who is making a documentary on Ethan’s story) and a Tartan Army foot soldier, Stephen Collie.

After his ordeal, how does Ethan feel about life?

“Like I could do anything,” he says.

Knowing what he now knows about his accident, how does he see his recovery?

“It feels well, impossible, almost,” he replies.

His love of football is undimmed. He still watches Huntly and still checks on Aberdeen and nothing will ever change on that front.

“The ride to Munich will keep me focused on my recovery and I’m really looking forward to it," he says. "We’re doing about 90 miles a day and I can’t wait for it. I can do it.

“None of us have a ticket for the Germany game. It would be amazing to get one, but just being in Munich will be incredible. The atmosphere will be unbelievable.”

And beyond Germany? “Well, I’ll get told if I can ever play football again," he adds. "There’s still no indication, but I want to and I keep telling myself I can.”

How could you doubt him now when he’s already defied the odds so many times?

Whatever challenges he faces on the road to Munich will surely seem incidental to the boy with the unbreakable spirit.