MESSAGES from his heroes at Bolton Wanderers are helping to bring teenage Austrian coach crash victim Richard Howard out of a coma.
Richard, aged 16, from Worsley, was badly injured last Tuesday when the coach he was travelling in near Salzburg rolled 100ft down a slope and landed upside down.
The Canon Slade School pupil was flown to a hospital in Innsbruck for treatment to a torn spleen, ruptured liver, lung damage and facial injuries.
Doctors have since been keeping him in a drug-induced coma to allow his body the rest it needs to recover.
On Friday night they began bringing him round, with his mum Melanie and dad Martin at his beside. Richard has managed to squeeze his mum's hand and, when she mentioned that Wanderers manager Sam Allardyce had been asking after him, he even tried to sit up.
The teenager and his family are lifelong Wanderers supporters.
Richard has been a season ticket holder since he was five and, when he was younger, was a ball boy at the club.
Sam and Wanderers players are now writing get well messages in a card and are sending it, along with flowers, to Richard's hospital bed.
Friends are rallying round to support the Howard family and are hopeful that Richard will be well enough to be flown back to England by air ambulance in a week's time.
But friend Lesley Hopwood-Ryan says doctors have warned that it could be up to a year before Richard makes a full recovery.
She said: Richard was due to get his GCSE results next week and was planning to return to Canon Slade in September to start his A levels.
"He is such a lovely lad. We are all praying and rooting for him."
Richard had been on holiday in Austria with his school pal Ian Astley and Ian's parents, Don and Glennys Astley.
Ian escaped with minor head injuries while his father suffered broken ribs and broken nose. They were both treated at a hospital near Salzburg.
Mrs Astley, who was more seriously injured with a fractured spine and broken ribs, was airlifted to a hospital in Munich, Germany.
She underwent a successful operation on her back on Saturday where doctors inserted metal plates. Doctors are confident she will walk again.
Her son Peter said: "It is quite a slow process but I am told the operation went well. She will recover, slowly but surely."
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