Blood Poisoning and Field Sports
- Gary Moller
- Aug 21
- 2 min read
Hard Lessons We Can't Ignore
I've just read the horrifying story of a young league player who lost a toe and needed heart surgery after a staph infection rooted in a minor field graze.
That grips me straight in the chest — because I've seen worse. I know of a couple of fatalities that began the same way: a simple scrape, a day on the field, then walking into a nightmare.
I do sports that sometimes result in awful grazes — dirty, ragged wounds after a slide on gravel and rock.
Injuries like these — even minor grazes — demand more than a cursory rinse. They need to be treated as what they are: open doors for bacteria, especially when fields are turned into bird toilets overnight — seagulls feasting at the landfill and leaving their droppings behind. Their waste carries nasty human-derived bugs, including drug-resistant strains. Morning comes, we strap on our gear — those germs are waiting.
Proper cleaning and wound care is your first line of defence. Wash as soon as possible after the game ends. Get under a clean shower, and scrub any wounds with soap and water until they're pristinely clean. Then cover them, and change the dressing once or twice a day. Each time, clean the wound again — gently scrub with soap to remove dead tissue and debris that bacteria love to feed on.
Antibiotics are wonderful — but not to be overused and abused. To ensure their ongoing effectiveness, we must be economic in their use, reserving them for cases where they are most needed. Basic wound care is your most effective weapon. Every time we resort to antibiotics unnecessarily, we chip away at their power. Over-use breeds resistant pathogens faster than we can kill them. We must not lose sight of that. As I've written before:
“Especially so, as antibiotics progressively are losing their effectiveness. The end of antibiotics is nigh! … Most wounds do not need antibiotics and antiseptics. All we need to do is practice some basic rules of hygiene…”
This is not alarmist. I've lived through this. I've raced down mountains, crashed hard, and healed stubborn wounds with simple, disciplined care. We may be fast, gutsy, and resilient — but we're not invincible. The body wants to heal itself — but we must stop giving the bugs an open invitation.
If an infection takes hold, act fast. No shame in going to the doctor, and there is a time and a place for antibiotics, which are truly miraculous life-savers. But don't let it get that far in the first place.
That's what I've seen across five decades of sport and natural health. It's preventable — but only if we stop overlooking the obvious dangers under our feet.
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