WANDERERS legend Roy Hartle was used to tough times on the football pitch.

But for the last two years he has been involved in the biggest battle of his life — recovery from a devastating stroke.

In the 1950s and 1960s, full-back Roy made 499 appearances for the club, during which time he was captain and also part was part of the 1958 FA Cup winning team.

He is still revered at the Reebok Stadium, where a room was named after him, and he attends home matches with his wife, Barbara.

Until two years ago the couple were enjoying retirement and spending time with their family. But one afternoon, after returning home from taking his step-great-granddaughter to the park, Roy collapsed from a massive stroke, leaving his left side paralysed.

“It was so frightening. I just went like that,” he said.

Barbara recalled: “I heard a bump and then heard ‘can you help me, I can’t get up’. He was behind the kitchen door.”

Roy had had a mini stroke 12 months earlier and so Barbara suspected this was a more serious stroke.

An ambulance took a semi-conscious Roy to the Royal Bolton Hospital, where he was to spend the next five months.

“The doctor said that if I hadn’t been so fit I would have died,” he said.

Unable to feed or care for himself, Roy spent two weeks on a general ward before being moved to the specialist stroke ward.

The couple were told the devastating news that the stroke had caused so much damage that Roy would not walk again.

But Barbara was determined not to accept the prognosis.

“I used to bring him home on a Saturday afternoon supposedly for a rest,” she said.

But instead she had hired a private physiotherapist to work with her husband.

Barbara said: “After five months in hospital I asked if I could bring him home to look after him because he wasn’t getting any better.”

The couple were appalled that the NHS could only offer stroke victims an hour’s physiotherapy for six weeks in their own homes following discharge.

So Barbara and Roy spent £5,000 of their savings having a physiotherapist go to their Astley Bridge home four times a week.

“We are fortunate we were able to do that. A lot of people don’t have the choice,” she said.

Although Roy, aged 78, is frustrated he will never fully regain his physical health, the results of his physiotherapy have been amazing and he is now able to leave his wheelchair and walk short distances with assistance, and continues to make slow progress.

Barbara said: “They may be only little things he can now do, but they are big things to us.”

She was horrified recently when she learned that Bolton only had the equivalent of three-and-a-half full-time physios working in the community with stroke victims.

Now the couple are backing a Stroke Association campaign to improve physiotherapy services throughout the country.

The association has been surveying stroke victims about their experiences, ready for the launch of the campaign next year and recently met with local members of Jigsaw, a support organisation which meets at Christ Church Hall in Mytham Road, Little Lever, on the second and fourth Tuesday of every month.

Jigsaw chairman Lilian Chamberlain said: “Physiotherapy is poor at the moment for stroke survivors. When anyone has a stroke their confidence goes and disabilities increase.

“But if you get good treatment and physiotherapy you can have a better quality of life.”

jrowe@theboltonnews.co.uk