Pictured above: Clayton (second from left) talks with Crows assistant coach Nathan van Berlo, his dad Matt and his younger brother Samuel.

Clayton Nelson’s inspiring journey to meet his Adelaide Crows heroes on the weekend started in the Alice Springs Hospital 15 years ago.

But along the way he has had to overcome challenges almost inconceivable for any parent and their child.

The football-loving teenager from Brisbane had a kick with the Crows on Metricon Stadium on Saturday thanks to a double lung and heart transplant that saved his life in 2020.

And the amazing story on how he became a Crows fan in the first place goes back to when he was brought into Alice Springs Hospital at four months of age.

Paediatric nurse Bek Wooding was part of the team that cared for Clayton when he was diagnosed with a serious heart condition known as dilated cardiomyopathy.

“His mum asked me if I could take care of him so I filled out the forms for Foster Care and he came home with us at the age of 19 months,” Bek said.

“My husband Matthew had met him on weekends and it wasn’t a hard decision because he was adorable.

“It was only meant to be a short-term placement, and here we are still now with legal guardianship.”

That is also how Clayton came to barrack for the Crows.

“Matthew is an absolute mad Crows fan, his whole family is,” Bek said.

“They’re from the Northern Territory and you kind of get to choose who your team is, and for some reason they decided the Adelaide Crows.

“So Clay has followed the Crows too and he was so excited about coming to training and seeing the players on the Gold Coast.

“He isn’t allowed to play footy anymore because of blood thinning medication but he loves the game and the Crows so much.

Clay faced significant health challenges during his early years but he didn’t let it stop him from playing the game he loved. However that came to a head in 2019.

“Up until then he still lived a pretty full life, he had restrictions, but he played footy just not full games because he had low energy levels and was short of breath,” Bek said.

“He wasn’t supposed to make it to his fifth birthday so he was a pretty sick little lad, and to get to 13 before needing the transplants was a real achievement.

“In 2019 they thought he had a chest infection which turned out to be end stage heart failure overnight.

“I thought it was something a bit more, so I popped him in the car and went to hospital and when we were in the carpark he became really sick, and we didn’t leave hospital for four weeks.

“We were transferred via a medical flight to Melbourne to go on the heart transplant list.”

They were on the wait list for 10 months and the family stayed in hospital and Ronald McDonald House.

“While we were doing the work in the lead up to the heart transplant, they discovered that the problem had scarred his lungs,” Bek said.

“We lived in and out of hospital and it got very serious, they put him on the national wait list and were desperately searching every day.

“He was palliative at that stage and we were looking at hospice, he was dying.

“That went for two weeks before we got the call. They couldn’t do the heart and lung transplant separately because neither would be able to support each other and they would end up failing.

“So they had to do them together. Heart and lung transplants in kids is very rare and generally they said they’d do one a year, if that, and only in the Alfred Hospital in Melbourne.”

The procedure took almost 10 hours and Clay’s recovery was long and challenging.

“He spent six weeks in ICU and they had to intubate him three times before they transferred him to the ward,” Bek said.

“They don’t give you any indication of what the future may hold because it’s all personal, heart transplants have a longer lifespan than the lungs, and there are a lot of complications that come with the lungs.

“We just take each day as being an important day but he sure is tough, he has a great state of mind.

“He had a ball with the players, he was a bit sad that they lost on Sunday but he said it was pretty amazing to go to training with them the day before.”

Clayton was able to visit the Crows on Saturday and Sunday thanks to the help of the Adelaide Crows Foundation.

You can find out more about the Adelaide Crows Foundation here