Nottingham Forest striker Taiwo Awoniyi has been woken from his coma as he continues to recover from emergency surgery.
Awoniyi reportedly sustained a ruptured intestine after colliding with the post towards the end of Forest’s 2-2 match against Leicester City, incredibly continuing to play even after Nuno Espirito Santo had made his last substitution.
He was medically induced into a coma to facilitate his healing process, but it was the Daily Mail that initially disclosed Awoniyi’s awakening following the completion of a secondary surgery on Wednesday night.
This incident has intensified the examination of officials regarding the current offside rules. Assistants are advised to delay signaling offsides until play concludes to permit VAR evaluation, though many had foreseen this might result in preventable injuries.
In Awoniyi’s case, Anthony Elanga had clearly run offside in the build-up but, following the guidelines, play was not stopped and the competitive nature of proceedings ultimately led to Awoniyi’s collision with the post.
“Anthony was miles offside,” Forest right-back Ola Aina said. “The whole world could see and so could I from where I was. You think ‘offside’ straight away. Surely you could just lift the flag up?
“Personally I liked how it was back in the day when for offside they just put it up straight away. A simple decision and get on with the game.
“Having to see it out and then just see this happen… well none of this would have happened to T if the flag had just gone up would it?”
Aina continued: “This is our teammate and brother and someone we spend most of the year with. It affects everybody in some sort of way. All we can do is show our support and hopefully everything goes well for him now.
“It’s horrible seeing someone you are close with go through something like this but I pray to God everything goes to plan and goes well and that we will be hearing from him soon. I have sent him messages. We all have.”
