BIRD flies over the line', the newspapers used to report, before the cruel injury.

For a brief spell, Ken Bird, from Westbrook, was a tough tackling, try-scoring centre on the verge of a great rugby league career.

Then came the accident that cost him his dream and his livelihood, 50 years ago next week.

"It was destroying," said Ken, aged 71.

His wife Patricia, aged 70, said: "It was horrible. To this day, I don't think he has ever got over it."

Ken grew up in Fairfield and played for Warrington schoolboys before going on to National Service with the Grenadier Guards.

He arrived home at Bank Quay train station to find Wigan RFLC directors waiting to sign him up after they heard about his performances for the British Army team.

The league was semi-professional and Ken worked full time at Ferris Light Coating foundry, on Stafford Road in Stockton Heath.

On training days he got up at 7am, got the bus to Wigan after work and got home at 11pm.

He broke through into the first team and played 20 games by the age of 21, scoring in nearly every one. it was during a game against Barrow that his bright career came to an end.

He was sandwiched between two players while making a tackle.

He felt shook-up but the only apparent injury was a black spot under his right eye.

Later, he started to see people disappearing from the knee downwards.

He had suffered a detached retina.

Ken was determined to play on.

In the morning he was told he needed an operation, and in the afternoon he played Liverpool Stanley.

The surgery involved removing his eye from the socket and trying to reattach the retina.

He spent six months afterwards with both eyes bandaged up and forbidden to move while it settled.

But the operation was not a complete success and after going under the knife four more times, twice with the Queen's eye specialist in London, the doctors admitted defeat and fitted a glass eye.

Ken tried to play on but clubs would not insure him - and he got no insurance money for the injury.

"They said they were going to have a benefit match for me but nothing happened," said Ken, from Bristow Close.

He played amateur rugby afterwards, for Cadishead, Irlam, and Rylands Rec, and former teammate Ernie Ashcroft tried to get him a game when he became Warrington manager in 1962, but the club wouldn't insure him either.

Ken is proud of his brief professional career - but the pride is always tempered by the memory of what could have been.