Football Hunt shows his support for Portishead skipper’s cancer battle
JACK Hunt leaves his Clapton-in-Gordano home soon, and will be moving up to Leeds later this summer after his Bristol City contract was not renewed at the end of the 2020-21 season.
Only three other City players played more minutes than the 30-year-old did for the Robins across the marathon but congested 2020-21 campaign, and the rightback has made 109 league appearances over the last three years since he joined from Sheffield Wednesday (“Not bad for an old dad,” he chips in.)
No other City player has played more over that same time, and as Hunt completed his most league minutes ever in a season, he also notched up two more assists to make it a healthy 12 in the Championship across his three years at Ashton Gate, with two more provided against Exeter City in the EFL Cup last September.
Hunt, who has been released for the first time in his career, describes his exit from Ashton Gate as a “kick in the teeth” but, in a true measure of the man, he is not letting that affect him: he has been passing on his training gear to help be sold off and raise money for the Nathan ‘Truesy’ Trueman challenge, which is looking to raise £50,000 for Portishead Town footballer Nathan, pictured, who was recently diagnosed with cancer.
The credit, says Hunt, should go to his neighbour Tom Russell, who came up with the idea of raising money for the great cause. Russell has been delivering the training items, with eager City supporters snapping up a bargain and donating to the total at the same time, with just under £12,000 to go at the time of writing (and with a donation from the Bristol Post added, too).
“It’s a great cause. I deserve zero credit for it - my incredible nextdoor neighbours that I’ve lived next door to for the last three years, coming from Leeds four hours away with two young children, I would not have coped without these people. We have a gate from our garden to their garden and they’ve been incredible since the day we met them. Louise, Rob, Tom and Lucy (Russell), and I gave some training stuff to Tom to use playing football for Portishead. For training and weights and other stuff. Fortunately, I’ve kept a few match shirts and things.
“But I’m 30 years old now and getting released in the first time in your career, whether I would have moved on or not this summer, it’s still a bit of a kick in the teeth. I just wanted to pass on my things and get ready to move house. I’ll be staying in Bristol until the end of July, until my eldest finishes school.
“So, I took everything I had round to my neighbours and Louise said ‘why don’t we get some money for it and we can give it to the Nathan Trueman challenge?’ It’s a fantastic idea and they’ve structured it all.
“Tom, a 19-year-old lad, has been out dropping it off at people’s houses, bagging it up - and he deserves a massive amount of credit for it,” explains Hunt, who has also donated to the fundraising himself.
The money is being raised to help Nathan ‘Truesy’ Trueman, who has been described as a ‘Rolls Royce of a young footballer’ by
Portishead Town coaches, and at just 20 years old he is leading the team as their captain. After spending time at Bristol Rovers and Forest Green, ‘Truesy’ received the dreadful news last December that he had a rare, large and incredibly aggressive (grade 4) tumor growing within the tissue of his right shoulder (known as a synovial sarcoma). Intensive chemotherapy is needed followed by surgery and radiotherapy. Nathan’s family say the Go Fund Me page has been set up to hopefully earn enough money to cover his minimal outgoings over the next months as he is unable to work while he receives treatment. It also supports both Sarcoma UK and the Teenage Cancer Trust, personally chosen by Nathan.
As for Hunt, the full-back is optimistic. He made every City squad last season, when other players were dropping like flies, bar the final one as Nigel Pearson left him out to look at more youthful options, and Coventry away.
That’s a fine record and no doubt he’ll land a good new club this summer.
We can tell from our phone call that there is some pain about how the end has come about, which goes to show Hunt cared.
The plan is to keep raising money from selling off his kit and Bristol City items and do what Hunt can at the nearby Children’s Hospice South West.
His wife, Cara, helped out earlier this year, collecting donations from the whole City squad to take hundreds of pounds of Easter eggs to the children there, and to hand another collection to the Portishead food bank.
This last year has not been easy with constant Covid testing and a pandemic to negotiate, with that contract winding down, and it’s been a hectic time for both.
“My wife was doing homeschooling for my eldest for pretty much a year (across the pandemic). I tried to get involved but I’m not the brightest person at stuff like that, and also having a toddler running round your feet, but I’m very lucky to have the people we have around me, such as my neighbours. I’ll obviously miss them when we move on,” added Hunt.