When Dylan Tombides found a lump, he was still a teenager trying to make his way at West Ham.
He went to a local doctor and was told it was a benign cyst.
He was 17, living away from home, trying to become a footballer, and the last thing on his mind was cancer.
“All I was thinking about was getting in the West Ham team and taking my driving test.”
Then he went away with Australia to the Under-17 World Cup in Mexico.
After the last game, he was selected for a random drugs test.
The result came back with two possibilities.
He had either taken a banned substance, or there was a tumour in his body.
Dylan knew which one it was.
He came back to England on the Thursday.
On the Friday, West Ham arranged the scan.
By the Monday, he had his testicle removed.
By the weekend, he was starting chemotherapy.
His mum Tracy tried to give him something to hold on to.
“I believe you’re going to be a cancer patient for a very short time, but you’ll be a professional athlete for a long, long time.”
So Dylan treated it like that.
He dealt with the treatment when he had to.
But whenever his body let him, he went back to being a footballer.
He kept going into training.
He kept trying to build himself back up.
And inside West Ham, people could not believe what they were seeing.
Carlton Cole later said nobody at the club really knew what to do with it at first.
“It was a difficult situation, especially for someone so young, but the boy just kept on going.”
Matt Jarvis came in that summer and did not even realise straight away what Dylan had already been through.
“I only ever saw him smiling.”
That was what made it so hard to understand.
Dylan was going through something most people could not imagine, and yet around the club he was still smiling, still training, still trying to get closer to the first team.
Then, on the 25th of September 2012, Sam Allardyce gave him that moment.
West Ham were playing Wigan in the League Cup at Upton Park.
Dylan came on for his debut with six minutes left.
He was 18.
Just over a year earlier, he had been told he had cancer.
Allardyce never forgot it.
“He was one of the bravest characters I have ever met.”
“Football was his life, and he didn’t miss a day’s training even when he wasn’t fit enough to train because of his treatment.”
By December, he was back on high-dose chemotherapy.
He needed stem-cell transplants.
Then in January 2014, after everything his body had already been through, he still went to play for Australia at the AFC Under-22 Championship.
Four games in eight days.
When he returned to England, he was told the treatment was no longer working.
Dylan passed away on the 18th of April 2014.
He was 20 years old.
The next day, West Ham played Crystal Palace at Upton Park.
His dad Jim and his brother Taylor walked out and laid his number 38 shirt on the centre spot.
West Ham then retired the number.
Before Dylan, the only player in the club’s history to receive that honour was Bobby Moore.
#football
NOEL GALLAGHER SLAMS GLASTONBURY AS 'WOKE' AND 'VIRTUE SIGNALING':
“It’s getting a bit woke now, that place, and a bit kind of preachy and a bit virtue-signalling. I don’t like it in music – little fucking idiots waving flags around and making political statements and bands taking the stage and saying, ‘Hey guys, isn’t war terrible, yeah? Let’s all boo war. Fuck the Tories man,’ and all that. It’s like, look – play your fucking tunes and get off.”
‘Heat’ turns 30 today!
The iconic shootout scene is famous for its intensity and volume. Director Michael Mann placed microphones along the street to capture the real echoes. US Marine recruits have even watched it as a lesson in retreating under fire.
https://t.co/OxFHQZJJp9
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