Newcastle United's club doctor has not been able to switch off completely this summer - and there is a good reason for that.
At any given moment, Dr Paul Catterson could get the call and a medical will have to be booked in for a new signing. That is exactly what happened before Matt Targett completed his £15m move to St James' Park last week.
"I'm always ready," Dr Catterson told ChronicleLive.
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Dr Catterson did not have to go too far to carry out Targett's tests, on Tyneside, but he did have to travel thousands of miles to Brazil earlier this year to conduct Bruno Guimaraes' medical because the midfielder was on international duty at the time. If ever a sentence summed up how the club has changed since the owners arrived last October.
Just as Newcastle are attracting a different profile of player on the field, the hierarchy are keen to ensure that Eddie Howe and the club's staff have proper support off it, too. Among the positions Newcastle are currently recruiting for is an assistant first team doctor to deliver elite sports medical services for the senior squad and that additional help has understandably been welcomed by Dr Catterson.
"We can now look forward and start to build and I can get the best in class," he said. "If we want certain pieces of equipment or certain members of staff, we can now go out and source what we think is the best.
"It's so encouraging and we've been really lucky with the owners and the manager, who have both done brilliant jobs, and were so part of this in helping to drive everything forward.
"The manager is meticulous. He leads by example and he's so hard-working and pulls everyone along with him. Just the small things like the photographs after the game. He really brings that togetherness, that will to win, to try that extra percent and get the best out of all the staff at the training ground.
"It's just a real drive and enthusiasm to be the best and to do the best we possibly can week in, week out and day in, day out just for the benefit of Newcastle United and the wider area as well."
Howe is one of nine managers, permanent or otherwise, who Dr Catterson has worked with since taking up a full-time position at Newcastle under Alan Shearer back in 2009. These bosses are all very different characters, but it is not a coincidence that they all speak so highly of Newcastle's head of medicine, who is one of the leading figures in the field.
It is a minor example, given the improvements Dr Catterson and his team have made behind the scenes at Newcastle over the years, but Steve Bruce once went as far as to say that his former colleague 'won us the game' against Southampton in 2019 after he stitched up Paul Dummett's split lip in just two-and-a-half minutes. This allowed Bruce to make a positive final substitution rather than taking off Dummett and bringing on another defender and it was replacement Sean Longstaff who ended up playing a crucial role in the build-up to Federico Fernandez's winner after his effort from distance was parried into the Argentine's path. These are the fine margins at this level.
Away from the pitch, Dr Catterson led Newcastle's response to the pandemic, whether it was banning handshakes weeks before the season stopped in 2020 or working 15-hour days to ensure the training ground was safe enough for players and staff to return a few months later. Dr Catterson has also established a pioneering relationship with sports science firm Orreco, who help monitor the biomarkers of the players, and this gives Newcastle precious information about how each individual is responding to both the training and match load.
These developments have certainly not gone unnoticed by Dan Ashworth, who will work closely with the head of department in the months and years to come as Newcastle's sporting director, and Dr Catterson is already a big fan of the new arrival.
"I've heard very good reports about Dan and met him a few times but in terms of the processes and support on my side, I think he will be brilliant, actually, and a real advocate for my role and myself trying to progress the department and the medical side of things," he said.
"I'm really looking forward to working together with him and the manager with taking that forward."
Dr Catterson has been speaking about Ashworth and co following a showcase event at Wallsend Boys Club after the Premier League made more than 2,000 defibrillators available at grassroots clubs across the country. The device just outside the football office at the boys club is actually the same one Newcastle have at both the training ground and St James' Park, and it could help save lives.
There are more than 30,000 out-of-hospital cardiac arrests every year in the UK, but, unfortunately, less than one in 10 people survive. Effective CPR and deploying a defibrillator within three to five minutes of collapse can more than double the chances of survival in some cases and Dr Catterson knows that better than anyone.
It was only a few years ago, after all, that the club doctor's assistance was required after referees' assessor Eddie Wolstenholme collapsed in the tunnel around 45 minutes before Newcastle's game against Burnley at Turf Moor kicked off. Eddie was technically dead for one minute and 40 seconds but, thanks to the efforts of Dr Catterson and Burnley's Dr Simon Morris and Dr David White, the former Premier League official's heart was shocked back to life using a defibrillator before he was rushed to a specialist cardiac unit in Blackpool.
"It always hit home to me that incident because, in some ways, Eddie was so lucky to be there at the right time," Dr Catterson added. "If he had been on the M62 half an hour earlier, it would have been a different story.
"I vividly remember Rafa [Benitez] running through to the changing rooms and saying, 'Paul, can you come down?' We fortunately worked on him successfully.
"Then he had his hospital treatment a week later and he's fighting fit and leading a normal life again. We were all just so lucky in that instance."
The Premier League is providing more than 2,000 potentially life-saving defibrillators for grassroots football club facilities in England and Wales. Visit www.premierleaguedefibs.org to apply.
