The son of former York City soccer hero Gordon Staniforth has the ball at his feet again only ten months after breaking his back in an horrific fall in the United States.

Sports-mad teenager James, from Copmanthorpe, near York, has returned to football coaching and has even started a new job.

To top it all, his family's worries about a possible £200,000 medical bill are now at an end after a public medical fund in the States agreed to pay for his two-month stay in a U.S. hospital.

Now he is looking forward to a 20th birthday junket in Ibiza in June with his mates.

The only cloud on the horizon now for James, who had two metal pins inserted in his back after falling 50 feet from a bridge while on a coaching trip in the US, is a wait of more than a year for surgery in this country to remove the two rods inserted in his back.

He had to delay the start of his university course in Teesside, studying business and leisure management, while he recovered from the treatment and said he now feared he may have to delay it yet another year.

"The rods can stay in my back for life, but unless I have them removed I won't be able to take up football again and I want to get them out as soon as possible," he said.

"But the waiting list at St James's Hospital in Leeds for the operation is 59 weeks, which means I could be in hospital for another few weeks next March."

He said he was hoping the hospital would let him have the operation before his university course started.

Converted for the new archive on 30 June 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.