Dominic Ball, a football player for Ipswich Town, is bringing attention to bone cancer in light of the 26-year-old death of a friend.

When the midfielder was eleven years old, he linked with Spencer McCall because they both loved football.

In 2019, Mr. McCall’s apparent bruised bone turned out to be a malignancy that had fractured his leg, and he was diagnosed with an uncommon sarcoma.

Sarcoma UK received donations from the player’s book, From Winning Teams to Broken Dreams.

Ball’s group of pals, including Mr. McCall, and their journey to become professional football players are the subject of the book, which has raised £10,000 so far.

Although sarcomas can develop everywhere in the body, bone sarcomas and soft tissue sarcomas are the two most prevalent kinds.

When Mr McCall was first diagnosed, he believed he had hurt himself during practise while he was a player for Hemel Hempstead Town FC.

But as the agony increased, a scan indicated that he had an Ewing sarcoma tumour in his leg, which had broken. Just 14% of bone sarcoma diagnosis are Ewing sarcomas.

He stated: “It is really hard to locate since it takes a long time to diagnose, as it does with these bone malignancies.

Since I work with sarcoma now, you hear of young men and adults who are diagnosed with the disease, which is quite uncommon. Additionally, there are a number of sarcomas, making treatment extremely challenging.”

His “inspiration” to desire to educate more people—especially young folks who believe it might never happen to them—came from watching his friend go through therapy.

“To be honest, Spencer was probably one of the toughest members of our close-knit circle of friends. He was a true inspiration to me throughout that time, and even though we were going through a difficult time, he never let us feel sorry for ourselves.”

At 19:00 BST, he will be speaking at a book discussion event at Portman Road, supporting Sarcoma UK and the Ipswich Town Foundation.