LIONHEARTED Liam Burbridge has enjoyed a year of mixed blessings.

Twenty-one-year-old Liam has enjoyed the highs of becoming a father and passing his driving test.

And he was delighted to top the votes for the St Helens Rugby League Courage Award in the Pride of St Helens event after bravely battling back after a serious motorcycle accident left him low with life-threatening injuries.

But from that February low point he has bounced right back. Now Liam is looking to 2014 as the start to a new chapter in life and is eager to return to his job as an apprentice electrician.

After receiving the Saints award he dedicated it to his mum, Lisa, his sisters Lauren, 19, and Ellie, five, and his partner Becca, 23, and their five months old daughter Leyla.

Liam, from Clock Face, vividly recalled how his world turned upside down one Tuesday afternoon last February.

Learner rider Liam was riding his YZF 125 Yamaha ahead of his pal Alex Taylor on a Suzuki 600 Bandit heading towards Cronton from Rainhill.

As he went round a bend near the motorway his machine and a Mitsibushi Warrior 4 x 4 travelling in the opposite direction collided.

“I was thrown into the the windscreen and over the top of the car. I was lying in the road and my bike was trapped under it and dragged along the road,” said Liam recalling after the crash he tried to move but couldn’t.

“Alex ran over to keep me calm. I couldn’t feel my left leg. I’d broken my anke, my left femur, thigh bone, left wrist and had a ruptured spleen.

“I had no pulse in my left foot and at one stage it looked as though I might die. They discovered I’d ruptured my spleen and blood was leaking into my stomach.

"They tried to save my leg but on March 6, four weeks after I went into hospital they amputated my left leg below the knee during the eighth of 13 operations I had.”

Liam passed his driving test at the first attempt on December 5 and is thrilled to have got a full manual licence and has a Ford Fiesta.

Employed by MF Electrics on the Wirral he still loves motorcycling and regularly jumps on the pillion of his mate Alex’s Bandit.

“I still love bikes. Alex is my chauffeur I climb on and when I want to go just tell him, ‘Home James’,” said brave Liam.