twofootedtackle.com

This website, through its fresh and shiny lack of advertising, brings in not a dime for me or anyone else on the team. Nobody gets paid, nobody’s getting rich. However, I still believe it can act as a useful vehicle for something I’ve wanted to do for a long time so I’m absolutely ecstatic to announce that twofootedtackle.com has appointed Cardiac Risk in the Young as its official chosen charity.

May 2010 marked the 15th anniversary of CRY, which was launched in 1995 by Dr Alison Cox to raise awareness of conditions that can lead to sudden cardiac death and sudden death syndrome in apparently fit and healthy young people. As you can imagine, these are conditions that affect young sportspeople and many footballers have sadly lost their lives due to heart conditions that instinct tells us healthy people shouldn’t develop.

We all know about the high-profile cases. Phil O’Donnell, Antonio Puerta, Dani Jarque and Marc-Vivien Foé were just a handful of the professional and semi-professional footballers whose heart-related deaths have hit the headlines in recent years. Foé’s death was witnessed by Terry Yorath, whose son Daniel, a Leeds United schoolboy prospect, passed away in his father’s arms in 1992, aged 15. In 2006, 27-year-old Matt Gadsby died in hospital after collapsing during Hinckley United’s Conference North visit to Harrogate Town. The list goes on and on.

Immediately preceding CRY’s launch, England schoolboy international John Marshall died at the age of 16 on the day he was due to join Everton, and it is John’s death that is the reason for TFT’s partnership with CRY. He was a much-loved former pupil of my primary school in Bournemouth. I was in his cousin’s class and his sister, Hayley, was also at the school. John’s aunt is my mother’s best friend.

As a keen young footballer, I’d seen a player from my school succeed, head off on tour with his dream club, Liverpool, and return home to announce his intention to sign for Everton instead. John’s loss was keenly felt in Bournemouth and a charity match was organised by CRY at AFC Bournemouth’s Dean Court home and the support for the event was remarkable. Ever since then, Cardiac Risk in the Young has been a charity I wished I had the money or a platform to support better than I have.

With that in mind, I’m delighted that CRY has agreed to this partnership and I hope TFT can send a few quid their way every now and then one way or another.

So CRY will have a link up in the menu in the top right where you can find out how to donate, and we’ll be promoting some of their events and, hopefully, arranging some fundraising activity ourselves.

Needless to say I’m bristling with pride to have secured this partnership and must thank Ben Robinson at CRY for his help in arranging it. If you have any questions, comments or suggestions about or for our partnership with Cardiac Risk in the Young, please email cry@twofootedtackle.com.