Great survivor The extraordinary story of the footballer who has recovered from cancer twice
Joe Thompson reveals to Jim White how coping with illness has given him a zest for living
‘I’ve got the tools not only to win a few football matches but to win the game of life’
Joe Thompson has been on the sidelines for five weeks now, a torn hamstring meaning he has been obliged to sit out Rochdale’s League One campaign. Not that he is complaining. “I’ve got over worse,” he says as he sits in the media room at the club’s Spotland stadium. He is not exaggerating. This is the footballer who, in a 12-year career as a professional, has not once, but twice, been struck down by cancer. More to the point, not once, but twice, he has come through intensive, debilitating courses of chemotherapy and has returned to the game. This is a man who has spent much of the past decade defying all medical assumption.
“My appetite for life now is massive,” he says. “I try not to be around negative people, I can’t have that. There’s so much to be grateful for. Every morning, I wake up thinking how fortunate I am just to have a bed to get out of.”
His brushes with death have completely transformed him, he says. These days he gushes optimism, good humour and bonhomie. It is all there in his autobiography Darkness and Light, published next week. It is an extraordinary tale, told with characteristic vigour and panache. He may be only 29, but Thompson has lived quite a life.
“Yeah, when they told me I had 80,000 words, I thought: is that all? I could fill twice that.”
From his fraught early childhood in Bath, when his petty-criminal father would regularly beat his bipolar mother, it is evident Thompson was not exactly born with a silver spoon in his mouth. But, oddly even, though his father is now in prison, and they were reconciled only recently, he believes his upbringing instilled in him a vital lesson: he was determined to achieve the kind of success and stability that was so sorely lacking in those early days.
“You learn from life. I’m fortunate that because of my father I know what not to do. And I look at my mother and think if she can get through all she has done, then surely I can get through my problems.”
Initially any problems he had were largely football-oriented. After moving to Rochdale aged seven to live with an aunt, his speed and athleticism were quickly noted. He was picked up by Manchester United and, through his teens, played in the same academy side as Danny Welbeck, Danny Drinkwater, Tom Heaton and Danny Simpson.
But he was let go at 16 for being too small (he now stands at more than 6ft), a moment he says that came close to breaking him.
“There is no nice way to be released but, man, it hurt. It was such a fall from grace. I lost my identity. Maybe arrogantly, I thought I was made and suddenly I was nowhere. But ultimately I look back and realise that United rejection was really important to me. It gave me such determination.”
Leaving United, he was signed by Rochdale and, with everything apparently back on course, he was making his way through the game, transferred to League One Tranmere, when one day, in the middle of a match, he suddenly lost all his ability to run.
Despite always priding himself on his fitness and resilience, he felt as if the energy had been sucked out of him. Worse were the lumps he found in his armpits. He was referred to a doctor who discovered his body was ravaged with tumours. It was thought he had been suffering from Hodgkin’s Lymphoma for up to three years, but his fitness had masked the symptoms. As he underwent chemotherapy, his body wracked with pain and nausea, his weight plummeting, his muscles wasting, the assumption was that he would never play again. But he was having none of that.
And within three months he was back training.
“Football has definitely helped me out,” he says of his resilience. “It’s a harsh business. Dressing rooms can be full of hyenas. You learn how to survive. When I was backed against the ropes, I wasn’t going to take it lightly. I came out fighting. There was no way I was going to let it beat me.”
Even after Tranmere did not renew his contract, he got back to playing with Bury and then Carlisle. Eventually, he made his
way back to Rochdale, the club where it had all began. By now married and with a daughter, life was good, settled, successful.
Then, in the summer of 2017, to his gathering horror, he felt his energy dissipate again. During a routine surgical check, a huge tumour was discovered on his chest. The cancer had returned.
“I’ll admit, after I was told it was back, there were nights when I’d cry myself to sleep. I had terrible panic attacks,” he recalls. “What really hurt was I thought I’d put everything in place to make sure it couldn’t come back. I’d changed my diet, become vegan, I felt like I’d emotionally got over it. And here it was again.”
But once more he took the diagnosis as a challenge, betting his doctor that he could beat the previous record for recovery. He did. And he was back training with Rochdale in the middle of last season, even making it to the squad for the FA Cup ties with Tottenham. Despite everything, he made it to the starting line-up for the club’s critical last game of the season, when only victory over promotion-chasing Charlton would keep them in League One.
And, incredibly, it was he who scored the crucial winning goal. It may not have been the winner in the Champions League final. But, for Thompson, it was a moment of sublime satisfaction, a moment seared on his memory.
“I knew I’d score as soon as I took the first touch. Time just stood still. As soon as I shifted it on to my left foot, no one was stopping it. And the fact I scored past Ben Amos, who was with me at United, sort of made me think maybe it was meant to be. It justified all the strain and sacrifice I’d experienced.”
Six months on from that moment, despite his current injury setback, Thompson, looking lean and clear-eyed, is still wreathed in smiles.
“I’m 99 per cent sure it’s not coming back,” he says of the cancer. “But then, if it does, I’ve got over it before, so I can get over it again. I’m not scared, I look forward to life. I’ve got aspirations.
“This game is all about winning. And what I’ve been through has taught me that I’ve got the tools not only to win a few football matches but to win the game of life.”
He has done that all right.
“Darkness and Light: My Story” by Joe Thompson with Alec Fenn is published by Pitch Publishing Ltd on Monday.