Help Andie Dickens with her ACL reconstruction

I am setting up this Go Fund Me page to ask for your help. I desperately need to fund a surgery to fix the complete tear of my ACL (anterior cruciate ligament).

Back in April, just before the end of the 23/24 season I was playing in a football match, having one of the best games. I planted my foot into the ground hoping to make a tackle, and I had no idea of the pain that I was about to experience. I fell down, screaming out in pain. I received immediate physio treatment on the pitch and, due to my love and passion for the game, I was determined to get up and play on. When trying to play on just minutes after, the pain was too much and I had to come off the pitch. After hobbling off the pitch at the end of the game on crutches I had this dreaded feeling that this was a serious injury, but I never imagined that it might be the injury that would end my career in woman’s football.

After having a couple weeks off work and several hospital and doctor’s appointments with the NHS, I wasn’t referred for the MRI that I kept pushing for. I was given a physio appointment through the NHS, where I was told that I had suffered stage 2 ligament damage and that I would be able to return to football with rest and recovery.

After weeks of rest and recovery I felt no improvement and that feeling of dread meant that I listened to my own body and, with the help of family and friends, paid to have an MRI done privately. I then received my results which came back to tell me I had a complete tear to the proximal third of the ACL. I was devastated.

I have played football all my life. Since I was 6 years old to be precise. I have never known my life without football in it. Football is simply who I am, and the only thing I have ever wanted to do. I’m good at it, and I’m very lucky that my team, Luton Town Ladies, remain a huge support. This is the most serious injury I have ever had throughout my football career, it’s also the longest I have been out of football (5 months). Anyone who knows me will know that playing football is everything to me and I am facing a very, very long wait for an operation through the NHS. I have been told I will be waiting over a year.

This leads me with no other choice but to ask for your help, something I have put off until now. I urgently need your support to raise the funds needed to go private for the surgery to help me get back to playing the game I love the most. It is not only the operation but I will need 3 months recovery time so I will be out of work which will also financially affect me. I always put myself forward when coming to help others. Now I need to be the one asking for your help to help me get back out on the pitch doing what I love and adore.

If you can help me, even in the smallest way, I will appreciate it forever. I simply cannot face a future without football in it.