Shane Duffy reflects on the horror injury that nearly killed him as he prepares for Republic of Ireland's date with destiny

Exclusive interview: Republic of Ireland centre-back suffered a lacerated liver seven-years ago, but now has the chance to fulfil a dream by qualifying for the World Cup

The Irish centre-back is a fan favourite for club and country (Getty)

Shane Duffy lifts up his hoodie to reveal the six-inch, L-shaped scar beneath. It stretches, in a chilling white streak, down the ribcage and across to his right waist. The memories have faded with time. But the scar is always there, reminding him of the moment when he was nearly gone.

These days, Duffy is Brighton and Ireland’s first-choice centre-half. He has been one of the surprise successes of this season’s Premier League, becoming a firm favourite on both sides of the Irish Sea with his courage, resilience and immense aerial presence. Now, just two play-off games against Denmark separate him and his Ireland team-mates from a first World Cup in a generation.

And so at the age of 25, a belated celebrity has been bestowed upon Duffy, who initially failed to make the cut at Everton, dropping down to the Football League to develop his craft before being promoted with Brighton last season.

Perhaps there is even a certain retro appeal there, a folk hero in a league where traditional centre-halves occasionally feel like an endangered species. He gets stuck in. He puts his body on the line. All that sort of stuff.

Except seven years ago, when Duffy was just 18 and taking part in his first Ireland training camp, these were no mere metaphors. During a practice match, an innocuous-looking knee in the ribs from goalkeeper Adrian Walsh left him out cold and saw him rushed to hospital. The collision had accidentally sliced open his liver, causing him to lose three litres of blood. Doctors warned his father Brian that he might not make it.

Duffy himself was in a coma, oblivious to the whole drama. And though he does not think about his brush with death that often, he does realise why people keep asking him about it. More importantly, he knows how close he came.

“This wasn’t an injury you would expect to sustain on a football field,” he explains when he sits down with The Independent at Brighton’s training ground. “The doctors said it was what you expect to see in a car crash.”

Duffy has excelled for Brighton this season (Getty)

After painstaking surgery and two agonising days, Duffy pulled through. “It was harder for my parents in many ways,” he says.

“It was clear pretty quickly how serious this was. My dad was told he could lose me, which must have been a huge shock. He had a couple of hours to wait before he knew if I would make it. I have two kids of my own now, so I appreciate what that must have been like.

“The doctors and the surgeons did something amazing for me that day. I will forever be grateful to them. If that match was being played somewhere else in the world, I don’t think I would have had the same outcome. I consider myself quite lucky.”

Yet even when Duffy returned to football several months later, something had changed. He had lost a lot of weight in the accident, and for a player reliant on his physical strength, that was a problem.

Duffy was lucky to survive the clash, which left a six-inch scar (Getty)

“My body wasn’t ready to come back when I did,” he says. “I was a lot skinnier, and was getting muscled off the ball a lot easier. I tried to get back to playing too quickly.”

Meanwhile, the coaches at the Everton academy were still trying to work on his technique. David Moyes had plucked him out of Sunday League football in Northern Ireland, but as Duffy admits: “I was very raw. A lot of academy players were ahead of me technique-wise. I had to work hard at the game to get anywhere.”

What he did have, in industrial-sized quantities, was spirit. Moyes recognised that from the beginning, and gave him a Premier League debut in 2012. But his departure for Manchester United the following year shifted the goalposts. The new manager, Roberto Martinez, preferred defenders who could slip easily into his style of possession football. Duffy realised his Everton days were numbered. He slipped down the pecking order, behind a promising young defender called John Stones.

“That was his kind of centre-half,” Duffy says. “He was still behind me a little bit, and Moyes would have played me ahead of him. But then Martinez came in, and he kicked on. He’s obviously world-class and only going to get better. I don’t think I ever had the feeling I was going to be a proper first-team centre-half there. It was time to have a career for myself.”

So Duffy took to the road. A year on loan at Yeovil was followed by a permanent move to Blackburn. In 2016, the south coast came calling. Chris Hughton had identified Duffy as the gritty centre-half needed to bolster Brighton’s promotion charge, and was prepared to fork out a club record £4 million for him.

With Duffy and Lewis Dunk forging an instant rapport at the back, Brighton claimed second place with the joint-meanest defence in the division. Duffy was back in the big time.

Duffy and Dunk formed an instant rapport (Getty)

Dropping down a division, Duffy believes, was the making of him. “It was huge for me,” he said. “Maybe not the glamour clubs, but I loved it. It got me playing every week. Proper man’s football.”

“Whenever the ball goes up,” Dunk explained last year, “I just step out of the way. And he comes through like a steam train.”

The same skills that got Brighton promoted are now working a treat in the Premier League. There is an ongoing debate within British football about the apparent decline of “traditional” defensive skills. Hughton describes Duffy’s ability to dominate in the air as “a dying art”. Jamie Carragher, meanwhile, waxed lyrical about Duffy after the recent 3-0 win against West Ham.

“We don't see enough of this in the Premier League now,” he said. “There's nothing better for me to see defenders defend like this, and want to defend.”

Hughton has been delighted with Duffy's form this season (Getty)

Duffy understands the point, but he rejects the subtext. “I can pass it as well!” he jokes. “And I’m not, like, a dirty centre-half where I would want to try and hurt someone. Listen, I know people talk about ‘this kind of defender’. It’s just... I’m better at that than being Sergio Ramos, you know?

“It’s who I am, and I realised that quite early in my career. I do really enjoy throwing my body around to try to save a goal, or put my head in to stop a ball. It’s the same feeling strikers would get scoring a goal. If I didn’t like defending, I probably wouldn’t be playing.”

Has he adapted his game against the higher class of forward he comes up against in the Premier League? “I think you’ve got to treat every striker the same,” he says.

“I just try and go at them. It’s a man against a man. I can put my stamp down and try and be aggressive with him. Obviously it’s a different game if you’re playing against a tall striker who wants it in the air, or an Aguero who wants to run in behind you and score.

“Sometimes, you’ve got to give respect and say, ‘I’m not as quick as Aguero’, so give myself a yard. I remember in the Euros when I came up against Antoine Griezmann. I struggled in the second half with his movement a little bit. He had [Olivier] Giroud up there, so he was just floating, and it was really hard to pick him up. I ended up getting sent off, and he scored two goals. But I’ve played against better strikers who I’ve done well against.”

Coming up against Griezmann at Euro 2016 (Getty)

Duffy has also had to fight battles off the pitch. As a Derry boy who played schoolboy football for Northern Ireland before switching to the Republic, Duffy has always attracted more than his fair share of online attention.

Earlier this year, after the death of Sinn Fein politician and former IRA commander Martin McGuinness, Duffy came under heavy criticism for a tweet paying tribute to him as “a true hero”. “I’ll always stand by what and who I support, it's the way I was brought up,” he retorted at the time, and whatever your views on his views, you can’t fault the guy’s bottle.

Despite turning his back on Northern Ireland, he wishes them well ahead of their own play-off against Switzerland. “It was difficult for me,” he said of his decision to play for the Republic.

“I only played for Northern Ireland because I was at a Northern Irish school. I was always changing to Ireland as soon as I turned professional. It’s great to see them doing so well. Michael has done an amazing job there with the squad he’s got. Personally, I hope they get there as well.”

Duffy would probably have made his Ireland debut in 2010 under Giovanni Trapattoni, had it not been for his accident. As it was, he finally made his bow four years later under Martin O’Neill, and Duffy has nothing but praise for the manager who threw him in at short notice for the crucial Euro 2016 game against Italy, and was rewarded with one of the most famous victories in the nation’s history.

“Martin is old school in many ways,” Duffy says. “He wants you to do the basics, do the simple things well.”

How did O’Neill motivate his troops in Cardiff last month, when Ireland famously beat Wales 1-0 to pip them to the play-offs? “He doesn’t really say much,” Duffy replies.

“He kept mentioning how big the World Cup was. ‘If you don’t realise how big the World Cup is, you’re in the wrong sport, and you’re one game away from a chance to go there.’ He kept mentioning that, and everyone got on board. I think we wanted it a little bit more than they did on the night.”

Now for Denmark, and for Duffy the more specific concern of how to stifle the likes of Christian Eriksen and Nicklas Bendtner in Copenhagen this Saturday. “People were saying we got lucky when we were drawn against Denmark, but I disagree,” he says. “This is a tough draw. People are saying we should look to get a draw out there, but why not aim for more? A 1-0 win would be very nice.”

Win, lose or draw, Ireland will have their chance to seal the deal in Dublin on Monday. And for a player who has been through what he has been through, who has often doubted whether he would ever reach this level, reaching the biggest stage of all would in many ways be the ultimate vindication.

“I believe that I can play at this level,” he says. “I believe I should be out there and belong there, and that goes a long way. I wouldn’t have believed, a couple of years ago, that I could be playing in these games again. It’s been a great journey for me.”