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If we could all turn back the clock, we would.” “He came and visited me and we stayed in touch so from my point of view he was genuine.

“I could tell he was very remorseful,” Keogh says. Keogh had always got on well with Lawrence. They got community service and driving bans rather than jail. Lawrence and Bennett were arrested and they would plead guilty at Derby magistrates court on 15 October 2019 to drink-driving and failing to stop at the scene of an accident. He had set off along the A6, adrenaline battling the disorientation, before a police car picked him up and drove him the short distance back. Desperate to avoid being taken to A&E – where he stood to be recognised and, doubtless, caught by cameraphones – he somehow persuaded the paramedics to let him walk.

Lawrence and Bennett returned to the scene 45 minutes later, by which time Keogh had headed home. Richard Keogh says: ‘If we could all turn back the clock, we would.’ Photograph: Fabio De Paola/The Guardian To all intents, he was left for dead and it was certainly a difficult moment for Keogh when he realised that later on. He had been abandoned by his teammates, left unconscious in the wreckage of Lawrence’s car. In the panic that followed, everyone fled the scene. Bennett drove his Mercedes – with no passengers – and, after a minute or so, when he stopped at a give-way line, Lawrence went into the back of him, before careering into the lamp-post. Lawrence had followed another Derby player, Mason Bennett, out of the pub. Let’s go.’ The next thing I know I’m waking up and speaking to the paramedics.” Everyone was in there before me so I didn’t think: ‘Hang on a minute.’ It was just: ‘OK. “I had no reason to believe he was over the limit. “I hadn’t spent the evening with Tom,” Keogh says. Keogh believed that Lawrence was sober and, with two others already in the car, he saw no reason not to get into the back. Did Keogh want to jump in? There was a Derby player in the passenger seat and another in the back. Keogh had missed his lift home but his teammate Tom Lawrence was in his Range Rover, keys in the ignition, ready to go. It’s probably not a great combination for anyone.” I think with my nan passing, it was a combination of emotionally not being in a great place and having a few drinks. “I would say I was a bit drunk,” Keogh says. Photograph: Jacob King/PAĪt the Joiners Arms, Keogh was part of a group that stayed on until last orders. Tom Lawrence (far left) and Mason Bennett are escorted by police from Derby magistrates court in October 2019. He decided that he would tell everyone about Iris another time. Keogh did not want to disrupt the preparations for Elland Road. In seven-and-a-bit seasons at Derby, he started 316 of 330 Championship matches and all 10 of the club’s play-off ties. It does not matter if he is carrying a knock or, in this case, dealing with trauma. Keogh told nobody at Derby and, the next day, he led the team out for the 1-1 draw at Leeds. My family were with her and she was kind of holding on.” “Luckily, we managed to get her on the phone. “We got a call to say that she’s going to die, basically,” Keogh says. Keogh is overcome when he remembers how Iris’s cancer suddenly worsened and he and Charlie could not get to Harlow in Essex, where she lived, in time to see her. She was the matriarch of the family a day-to-day figure in his upbringing. The team-bonding day was just what Keogh needed after the devastation of losing his grandmother Iris the previous Friday. Keogh has had to wait for legal reasons to give this interview and the only place to begin is at the Joiners Arms in Quarndon, where he and his then Derby teammates had gone for dinner and drinks, after a game of 10-pin bowling. I was literally on the line for a lot of the time.” But mainly I think I was right on the cusp of it. Some days, I was in depression – I genuinely do believe that. Photograph: Simon Galloway/PAĪt this lowest ebb, did Keogh contemplate suicide? “No,” he says firmly. Richard Keogh in action for Blackpool against Bristol City in the Championship this season.