'It’s not normal playing three months after heart surgery. I am blessed': Portsmouth's Colby Bishop on his inspirational journey
The Pompey striker defied doctors to return to football just three months and two days following heart surgery
They were lies, they had to be lies. In the absence of tell-tale symptoms and warning signs, the stinging words failed to make sense, particularly for a 27-year-old professional footballer.
In two prolific Fratton Park campaigns, Colby Bishop had missed just three League One matches, plundering 40 goals and collecting an armful of Player of the Season accolades in the process.
The tireless, battering ram of a centre-forward’s late penalty against Barnsley effectively earned the required point to secure promotion to the Championship, with Conor Shaughnessy’s dramatic last-gasp headed winner subsequently sealing the title.
Just 11 weeks after that emotional south-coast evening, Bishop sat in a room at Pompey’s training ground, struggling to digest the potential end of a playing career enjoying an upward trajectory, yet still to scale its peak.
A routine pre-season heart scan in July 2024 had identified an enlarged aorta heart valve. Had it remained undetected, he could have died playing the game he loves.
‘This can’t happen to me - it does’
Remarkably, three months and two days after undergoing open-heart surgery at Guys and St Thomas’ Hospital in London, involving breaking apart his chest bone, Bishop returned to the Championship.
Now the striker is heading a British Heart Foundation campaign, using his experiences to help save the lives of others.
‘They tell you what you've got, but you think they’re lying to your face. Not in a horrible way, but you’re thinking: “This can’t happen to me”. It does, though, even to footballers. In a way, I’m very fortunate that it did because I am here today to tell the story,’ Bishop told The News.
‘There’s now a piece of mesh around my aorta, making it smaller, so it doesn't allow my heart to expand, no matter what happens. This piece of mesh is unbreakable.
‘If I wasn't in football, though, it wouldn’t have been diagnosed. If I worked as a chef or a dentist or a painter, I wouldn’t have known. I could have been playing 5-a-side football and, should something then happen, I probably would have died.
‘Before diagnosis, the chances are high that you’re going to die. It’s the pure pressure which goes through that valve which causes a rupture to your heart. The percentages of survival are never high in your favour.
‘There was never a sign of this, not one problem - and that’s the scary thing. To this day, I still don’t know why it happened. Sometimes it's genetics, it’s your body, these things occur.
‘Yet I’m a professional, in a football environment, we’re lucky they screen our hearts. The care from Pompey and the people around me helped me get through the process. They discovered there was a problem, which has thankfully now been rectified.
‘At the time people told me I was lucky to find it, not that I believed them, there was a lot to take in. Now, with hindsight and upon reflection, I really do understand how lucky I am. I’m blessed.’
The popular striker had been a notable absence from the Blues’ summer schedule, including a week-long training camp in Medulin, Croatia, and four friendlies, passed off at the time as an injury.
Once the severity of the situation became public, the Fratton faithful rallied around their promotion-winning favourite, yet, from the outside, there remained doubts whether the man with the magic hat would ever again represent the club.
Bishop: At that time, I was possibly the fittest I have ever been in my life
He added: ‘At that time, I was at the front of the running, possibly the fittest I have ever been in my life, probably the best build up to a pre-season I’ve ever had. Then my world changed.
‘Everyone in the squad was having this generic heart screening at the training ground, it was my turn to go up to the Portakabin building. Then something was flagged up which I didn’t expect to be flagged up.
‘Basically, the valves in your heart are supposed to be a certain measurement - and mine were a lot bigger than the normal measurement. An echo scan looks into your heart for a measurement of how big the valve is, they found out mine was too big.
‘They said they wanted to speak to me at the end of the day. It was explained what had happened, but the person carrying out the health screening was not a surgeon or an expert, so they didn’t really understand the complications of what that meant.
‘Obviously the conversation was about life span, if I was going to be able to do sport again - and, initially, I didn’t get the answers for that.
‘On that day, they knew, but more information was needed - and I didn’t have a clue what any of it meant. I didn’t know if I was going to die or whether I couldn't play football again, I had to wait to find out the extent of it.
‘I went home and told my missus: “I think I’m done”. That’s me over. From the gist of what happened in that room, I didn’t think I was going to be able to play here. No longer being able to play sport again, which, since I was a youngster, is something I’ve loved more than anything. It’s scary.
‘My wife, Annabel, was eight months pregnant at the time with our first child, Camilla, so, as you can imagine, her emotions were high enough as it was. Let alone your husband coming home and saying he thinks he’s done playing football, he doesn’t know what his life span is going to be, all this stuff.
‘The last time my heart had been tested was at Notts County when I was 17. Nothing was flagged up at the time, it was normal, as they say. When I did that test for a second time, now at Pompey, it was abnormal.’
Connor Goldson inspiration
Struggling to glimpse a footballing future, Bishop scoured the internet in search of hope. The story of Connor Goldson provided the reassurance he so desperately needed.
As a centre-half with then-Championship Brighton, Goldson had made 11 appearances in the 2016-17 season, until being diagnosed with an enlarged aorta heart valve during a random check-up.
Just four months later, he returned for the newly-promoted Seagulls’ pre-season in the summer of 2017 in preparation for the Premier League and would go on to feature three times in the league that season, before being sold to Rangers in June 2018.
Now aged 32, he is presently with Cypriot side Aris Limassol, having totalled 309 appearances and 23 goals during six seasons with the Glasgow giants, where he won the Scottish Premiership in 2020-21.
Bishop said: ‘I was obviously very emotional at the time. My wife is a rock, I wouldn’t have been able to do it without her, and, after being diagnosed, it was a case of going away and trying to do our own research.
‘A couple of weeks later, we found out that Connor Goldson had experienced something very similar, so I reached out to him through Instagram. Straight away he responded with: “Here’s my number, give me a phone call”.
‘Having someone who had dealt with this already was hugely helpful - and Connor was very open about it. His wife spoke to my wife also. It’s a scary time, but for someone to tell you they have also been through this and, best of all, was telling me “I got through it, you can too” was exactly what I needed to hear.
‘We also found out through the research that there was someone who could carry out a procedure which would allow me to continue doing sport and that’s where I found my surgeon, a guy called Dr Conal Austin, who is an amazing person.
‘He reassured me that he had performed this operation on quite a few people in different sports, every sport you can imagine, including his friend Nick Isiekwe, who plays Rugby Union for Saracens. Like Connor, he had gone back and played again, so I was also put in touch with him.
‘It’s not normal to open up your body and have to break your chest bone to reach your heart, which was actually probably the hardest part of it. You don’t really know how much you use your chest bone until it is broken.
‘You come through your intensive care, you’re pumped through a lot of drugs, which kind of masks the problem, but also causes problems.
‘You get home and try to build up each day. For example, I would walk to one lamppost. The next day I would wake up and try to walk to the next lamppost, which would take it all out of you.
Bishop: Dr Austin told me: I will get you back playing
‘You don't realise how much you rely on your chest bone, coughing, sitting up, moving to the side. The pain, I am not going to lie, is excruciating. It was a tough, tough, tough time at the start.
‘Yet Dr Austin gave me the confidence I needed. He told me: “I will get you back playing”. I believed him.
‘I came back through hard work and determination. People told me “You won’t get back until this date, you won’t do this”. I just thought “We’ll see”. I worked my socks off. It’s not normal to come back playing three months after heart surgery.
‘I don’t know the stats, but I would be very surprised if it’s not the quickest return - and that was down to the people around me and myself. My drive through the whole thing was to get back, to score goals for Pompey, and to help us stay in the Championship.
‘You could say that's selfish, but that’s all that was in my brain. That’s why I got back so quickly.’
Bishop’s presence in Pompey’s match-day squad against Preston in November 2024 had been kept under wraps. A remarkable feat in itself considering leaked starting XIs have long blighted the club.
The 28-year-old was surprisingly named on Mousinho’s bench for the Championship clash, with the rock-bottom Blues desperate for inspiration following one victory from their opening 15 matches.
Replacing Kusini Yengi on 78 minutes, Bishop wasn’t merely content to soak up an emotional-charged comeback, he also marked the occasion by netting an 89th-minute penalty to earn a 3-1 success.
That provided the catalyst to Pompey’s season as they subsequently secured Championship status with two games to spare. Bishop finished as top scorer, having plundered 11 goals in 32 outings, including a hat-trick at Norwich.
He has remained a regular this term, featuring in all 19 of their league fixtures to date, although has netted just once, and in midweek found himself dropped to the bench for the 1-0 defeat at Swansea.
Yet while he battles to regain his first-team spot, off the pitch the striker has joined forces with ex-Luton man Tom Lockyer in spearheading the Every Minute Matters campaign launched by the British Heart Foundation in conjunction with Sky Bet.
It has been 17 months since being diagnosed with heart problems, now Bishop feels comfortable talking publicly about his own experiences - and is urging people to learn CPR to save lives.
‘I’m passionate about helping the British Heart Foundation’
He added: ‘When something like this happens, you need to process it in your own mind. You can’t judge anyone for not wanting to talk or if they want to talk loads about it, it’s each to their own.
‘Now is a good time for me to talk, I’ve had time to take it in and reflect. I’m ready to help people have more understanding about these issues. I’m passionate about helping the British Heart Foundation campaign trying to put people in better positions to save other people’s lives.
‘I understand everyone thinks they’re never going to be in this situation, but, unfortunately, these things do happen.
‘Speaking to Tom Lockyer, he didn’t know he was going to collapse on the pitch, he hadn’t been diagnosed. Yet he was lucky there was someone present who knew what they were doing to save his life.
‘There are a lot of people in the general public who don’t know how to act in these situations, which is no slight on them, I was the same. But, if you visit the British Foundation website and spend 15 minutes listening to how you can perform CPR, you could potentially save someone’s life.
‘I am technically in a safer place now. Basically, my operation will never allow my heart to expand too much, so now it won’t be able to rupture when a lot of pressure goes through.
‘I didn’t see it at the time, but I am very lucky. My heart is now in a better place.’
According to figures, eight out of 10 out-of-hospital cardiac arrests in the UK occur at home, with average survival around 10 per cent with CPR is attempted.
To learn CPR in 15 minutes, search BHF RevivR or visit bhf.org.uk/learncpr