Gethin was twenty-six, playing semi-professional rugby in the Welsh Premiership, when a scrum collapsed at Sardis Road in Pontypridd. It was October 2021. He heard a crack. Then nothing below his chest.
The First Six Months
Spinal injury at T6. Incomplete paralysis. The doctors at the University Hospital of Wales were careful with language: "Some recovery is possible. Full recovery is unlikely." Gethin spent four months in rehabilitation. He went from being the fittest person in most rooms to needing help getting dressed.
"I won't pretend I handled it well," Gethin says. "I was angry. Angry at God, angry at rugby, angry at the ground, angry at my own body. I'd defined myself entirely by what my body could do. When it stopped working, I didn't know who I was."
The Chaplain Who Kept Coming
The hospital chaplain, a woman named Sian, visited Gethin twice a week. He told her to leave. She came back. He swore at her. She came back. He refused to talk. She sat in silence.
After six weeks, Gethin finally asked: "Why do you keep coming?"
Sian said: "Because God doesn't leave when it gets hard."
That broke something in Gethin. Not a dramatic conversion — he'd grown up attending chapel in the Valleys. But this was different. For the first time, he believed God was present in the wreckage, not just the victories.
Wheelchair Rugby and a New Identity
A physiotherapist mentioned wheelchair rugby. Gethin was dismissive — it wasn't "real" rugby. But curiosity got the better of him. He attended a session in Cardiff in May 2022. Within five minutes, he was hooked. The intensity, the strategy, the physicality — it was rugby, just different.
By 2023, Gethin was playing for the Welsh wheelchair rugby development squad. By 2024, he was coaching juniors — young people with spinal injuries, amputations, cerebral palsy. Kids who'd been told their sporting lives were over.
"I went from thinking my life was finished to coaching kids who've been told the same thing," Gethin says. "I tell them what Sian told me: God doesn't leave when it gets hard. Rugby didn't end. It changed. And I changed with it. My legs don't work. My purpose does."
