Earlier this year twofootedtackle.com partnered with Cardiac Risk in the Young - CRY. The charity was set up in 1995 with the aim of raising awareness of the heart conditions that can lead to sudden cardiac death and sudden death syndrome. These conditions can affect apparently fit, active and healthy young people, including sportspeople, and football is no exception.
My unofficial relationship with CRY goes back almost to its very beginning in 1995, when I carried a bucket around Dean Court and bought raffle tickets (I won a signed football donated by Aston Villa, no less) at a Police v Paramedics charity match in memory of John Marshall. John went to my primary school and members of his extended family are family friends of mine to this day. He was a schoolboy international for England and was on the books at Everton when he died from a heart problem, aged 16.
The list of similar tragic cases is growing by the year and has affected players all over the world and at all levels of the game. Some of them will be all too familiar: Marc-Vivien Foé, Antonio Puerta, Phil O’Donnell, Dani Jarque, Serginho and Miklós Fehér are just a few of the players who have sadly lost their lives due to heart problems. Rubén de la Red, the 25-year-old Real Madrid midfielder, retired from football earlier this month after a lengthy battle with a heart condition.
This is why Cardiac Risk in the Young’s work in the UK should be important to football supporters. By aiming to increase awareness and testing, CRY works hard to prevent young lives being curtailed by underlying conditions that needn’t go unnoticed. It lists among its patrons the likes of Ian Botham, Rob Andrew, John Inverdale, Pixie Lott, David Walliams and James Cracknell. Former Stoke City captain Clive Clarke retired from football because of a heart condition and now works with CRY to help others get diagnosed before it’s too late.
I am honoured to be working with CRY in its 15th year and beyond, and here’s the bit where I ask you for money.
twofootedtackle.com‘s partnership with Cardiac Risk in the Young is a long-term arrangement and one that will see me do a lot of things I wouldn’t normally do in order to raise money. At some point in the next year I will undoubtedly be walking or running some obscene distance just to bank a few quid for this incredible charity. As I write, plans are moving forward at speed for a rather spectacular event in January or February 2011.
But before I get to work, I want to encourage as many donations as possible from the TFT community, so I set us a challenge of raising £1,000 before the end of 2010 that I can just hand over to CRY as a sort of ‘golden hello’, the first of many thousands I hope to send their way during my lifetime. I am aware that I’m just appealing to your kindness at the moment but this really is a worthwhile cause and it deserves every TFT avenue to be explored.
So, here’s what we’re asking of you: please, if you can, donate just £2 to our £1,000 Charity Challenge. It will make you feel good, it will make me feel good, and it couldn’t be simpler:
- Visit justgiving.com/twofootedtackle
- Donate £2 (or more, if you like)
- Tell your friends, followers and fans to do the same
Please help us reach our target. This website’s content is free for you all, produced at a small personal cost to myself (and takes a huge amount of our time) and does not take any advertising - so this is the only way in which we ask for anything in return for what we do. Times are tough at the moment, but come on…it’s two quid. Why not do something useful with it?
Thanks.