By Canadian Press

Canadian goalkeeper Rylee Foster back in top-flight football after near-death crash

Oct 31, 2024 | 10:19 AM

Players who have worn the colours of both Liverpool and Everton form a select club. But Canadian Rylee Foster’s journey from one Merseyside rival to the other is painfully unique.

The 26-year-old goalkeeper from Cambridge, Ont., is lucky to be alive, let alone playing professional soccer.

“For me every day is a blessing now. Every day is an opportunity,” Foster said in an interview.

Foster, then with Liverpool, was still basking in her role in a penalty shootout win over Aston Villa in Continental Cup play days earlier in October 2021 when her life changed in an instant.

On a break with friends in Finland, Foster was en route to a Drake concert when she was involved in a car accident. Sitting in the middle of the back seat as one of four passengers in the car, Foster was ejected through the windshield when her seatbelt malfunctioned.

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“It was almost like all the stars were aligning and then my world came down on me,” Foster said. “I was starting to get more minutes with Liverpool. Taking over the No. 1 (goalkeeper) spot was happening. The national team was becoming a consistent thing for me — I was able to kind of know that I was going to get called into camp because my performances were really good.

“To have this happen was at the exact wrong time and the worst thing possible for me. Because everything I had worked for was in my grasp. But then I lost it.”

Foster suffered the worst injuries in the car. She was left with seven fractures to her neck, two lower back fractures, broken cheekbone, misaligned jaw, partially torn medial collateral ligament in the knee, partially torn quadriceps tendon and subdural hematoma in the back of her head.

“I remember the crash beginning, the feeling of it, but after that I have no idea what happened,” she said.

“All I know is my seatbelt was on and my rib cage and my lungs had the proof to show it,” she added.

It was a long, hard journey back, starting with having to wear a halo screwed to her head for months.

“Absolute hell,” she said.

She also suffered concussion-related problems and had to work through depression.

Foster credits Liverpool and an army of doctors and physios for helping her back, as well as her family. Her younger sister Mackie essentially put her life on hold to help Foster’s recovery, spending six months in Liverpool.

“You just go into fight or flight mode and I was just fighting for everything,” Foster said. “Now looking back at it, the mental resilience was definitely there — to go through the rehab that took six hours a day for 13 months … It’s all the hard work that paid off, just to get me here.”

When she returned to training, the constant diving exacerbated a shoulder injury suffered in the crash, necessitating surgery to repair a torn labrum.

Even she admits her return to top-flight football is “absolutely insane.”

“I can’t even put words to how miraculous this recovery has been. And to be able to tolerate it now, it’s awesome,” she said.

In July 2023, some 636 days after the accident, she was cleared to play football again. She was in need of a club, with Liverpool opting not to exercise the option of a one-year extension when her contract expired in June.

“To be told that they never thought I’d be the same again was quite a tough pill to swallow,” Foster said.

Playing for the Reds had been a dream come true for Foster. Her grandparents came from the Wavertree district of Liverpool and Foster has “You’ll Never Walk Alone,” the title of Liverpool’s famed anthem, tattooed on her arm.

But she says Liverpool’s decision to cut her loose spurred her on to prove them wrong.

Foster had a tryout with Scotland’s Celtic, which offered her a contract before recanting and signing another ‘keeper. Then New Zealand’s Wellington Phoenix FC, which plays in Australia’s A-League, signed her in September 2023.

She emptied her storage unit in Liverpool and apartment in Glasgow “and moved across the world.”

“The fact that I’m alive is phenomenal,” Foster said at the time. “The injury that I sustained is known to kill you instantly, if not become a tetraplegic, which is what Christopher Reeve was.

“Joining the Phoenix is very symbolic. It’s a new becoming. It’s an arising from something that was literally in ashes.”

Foster made her return Oct. 14, 2023, in 1-0 loss to Melbourne City, 731 days since her last appearance. She made 19 appearances for Wellington before leaving as a free agent after the 2023-24 season.

“For me it was all about getting game time, building my confidence up and just getting experience back after what had happened to me,” she said of her time Down Under. “Honestly I loved playing over there.”

In September, she signed a short-term contract through January 2025 with Everton, where she is backing up Irish international Courtney Brosnan.

“Obviously I want game time but I know I have to earn my stripes back,” said Foster. “I have to work my way back up the rankings … But to even be here is an absolute honour.”

Today Foster has no problem driving, given she feels in control. But she gets car sick as a passenger, a remnant of the crash.

“I can get into a car. I just don’t feel great.” she said.

Foster has the numbers 10-16 tattooed on her right bicep. That’s the date of the car crash and, coincidentally, the exact time that the phone call was made to the emergency response team.

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This report by The Canadian Press was first published Oct. 31, 2024.

Neil Davidson, The Canadian Press