Joe’s battle is ‘a beacon of light’
Thompson beat cancer twice to score again for Rochdale
ON his Wikipedia page, it says: Joe Thompson, footballer. It could easily read: Joe Thompson, cancer survivor and crusader.
The Rochdale midfielder is embarking on a second career in the game, one in which football is the conduit for reaching out and making a difference.
He already has on the pitch. In the final game of last season, he came off the bench to score the goal that preserved Rochdale’s Sky Bet League One status.
It arrived five months into his second comeback from a rare form of cancer, nodular sclerosis Hodgkin lymphoma.
At 29, having already beaten cancer twice, Thompson wants to use his perch as a professional footballer to provide hope to others. “I don’t think enough cancer patients get the voice to talk about their fears and anxieties,” said Thompson. “You’re vulnerable and I know how much inspiration people take from my story because I have been flooded with thousands of messages from all over the world.
“The goal on the last day of the season was a big beacon of light for everyone that’s struggling. It gives people hope and if you’ve got hope and faith, you can go far.”
Thompson had already overcome a difficult upbringing to become a footballer in the first place.
With his father in and out of prison, he was living in Bath with his mother, a bipolar sufferer.
When she was admitted to a psychiatric unit, an aunt stepped in to save Thompson being put into care and brought him up to Greater Manchester. Football kicked in, Manchester United came calling and, by the age of nine, Thompson was playing in red every week. The transition to the men’s game went
through Rochdale and Tranmere until cancer entered Thompson’s life in the autumn of 2013.
“It just came out of nowhere,” he said. “I got very ill, I had a fever, I was being sick. I spoke to the club doctor and then some lumps popped up in the side of my neck, my lymph nodes, and that’s when I was rushed to get scans and tests. A week later the doctor told me I had cancer.”
The chemotherapy was a success but just as Thompson was fighting back to football health at the end of the season, Tranmere – under a previous regime, it should be added – told him he was no longer needed. Well, actually, they did not tell him. “I saw the ruthless industry that football is,” said Thompson. “I had done six months of chemotherapy, been given the all-clear by the doctors, so I was in remission and looking to get back into the Tranmere team when a letter just came through the post one morning. I picked it up and it was my P45.” The road back to Rochdale went through Bury and Carlisle. Thompson praises then-Carlisle manager Keith Curle for rebuilding his confidence as a player and as a man before destiny took him back to Spotland. “I did well on a six-month deal, got offered an 18-month contract, but not long after I went for a routine three-year followup and the doctor told me again that I had cancer. It had come back,” said Thompson. “They told me there were tumours on my chest. I was angry, really angry. And tearful.
“My daughter (Thailula-Lily) was four and I had a lot of questions to answer about why I was going to spend so much time in hospital.
“I’d done it before, so I knew I’d have to go through hell. I had two big bouts of chemotherapy, where I was on for six days, 24 hours.
“Then I had a stem cell transplant. Being told you have to spend up to eight weeks in isolation is something that tests your sanity. My wife came to see me, my mum, my brother. I wasn’t able to see my little girl for quite some time, but I brought her in on Father’s Day against the doctor’s wishes.
“It was a big risk but it panned out because she boosted my morale and reminded me what I was fighting for. I knew that I was going to come out of that door, maybe a bit worse for wear, but I was going to walk out on my own two feet, not otherwise.
“Getting back into football second time round was miles harder, but the people around me here at Rochdale didn’t rush me. They were magnificent.
“The goal I scored to keep us up was clarity in a way. It justified everything I had sacrificed and all the pain I had gone through. A magical moment and my family were there to see it.”
Thompson, who will miss tomorrow’s trip to Scunthorpe through injury, has written a book. He has also taken the first steps towards a post-football career as an inspirational speaker. He will be worth listening to.
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Goal I scored to keep us up gave clarity. It justified all the sacrifices and pain