Wakefield Trinity boss Willie Poching opens up on ‘scary’ and ’embarrassing’ heart attack

Willie Poching is now head coach of Wakefield Trinity after making the step up from assistant.

Wind the clock back to 2013, however, and Poching was the assistant coach under Tony Smith at the Warrington Wolves.

It was then, though, that the former Leeds Rhinos forward experienced something that no one wants to experience – a heart attack.

“It was January 2013 and I woke up one morning as normal to get ready for work,” Poching told the Out Of Your League podcast.

“I went into my son’s room to grab something and bent over and felt like a stab in the back.

“I continued getting ready, I thought I had heartburn and had a glass of water, but I told my wife and said ‘I think there’s something wrong here and my wife rang the ambulance.

“They did some ECGs on me I had what they called an event, I had a blood clot that was taking a while and a couple of events later they got down to the bottom of it and said that I had a blood disorder.”

Poching reveals that it was scarier down to the fact that he didn’t know what was going on.

“I didn’t know what was going on and until I was off the operating table but all the way through when the doctors were checking me I didn’t know what was happening.

“The nurse told me I had a heart attack and I was like ‘wow’. It was embarrassing, I was young and not long being an athlete.

“It took a little while to get the answers and I was scared for my kids.”