BOURNEMOUTH v LIVERPOOL

WHEN the shortlist of contenders for the BBC Sports Personality of the Year award was announced last month, many were outraged that Jermain Defoe was not on it. He deserved recognition, those campaigning on his behalf insisted, because of the heartbreakingly touching friendship and compassion he had shown to Bradley Lowery, a brave little boy who was dying of a rare form of cancer.

Defoe did not join the chorus of resentment. He was grateful for what people were saying about him but that was as far as it went. ‘If Bradley’s family were happy with what I did that’s enough for me,’ he says. ‘God sees everything. Look, if I won the Sports Personality of the Year and I’m standing there with a trophy, it’s not going to bring Bradley back.’

The story of Jermain Defoe and Bradley Lowery was one of the most moving tales of this or any other football year. It was a love story, not a football story. It was a story about a kid who disproved the old adage about never meeting your heroes. Bradley met his hero and as his life ebbed away, his hero became his best friend.

As he sits in an empty suite at Bournemouth’s Vitality Stadium, the England striker lets his mind drift back to the time they first met. He was sitting in the home dressing room at the Stadium of Light on a Monday evening in September last year when he heard the sound of an excited child rushing around amid the Sunderland players and a voice calling out his name.

Defoe thought that it could not possibly be the little mascot that the Sunderland press officer had told him he would be leading out on to the pitch before the Premier League match against Everton that evening. She had said the five-year-old boy was desperately ill but this kid sounded full of life, energy and joy.

‘I thought Bradley was so ill that he would be really quiet and subdued,’ says Defoe. ‘But he had this energy. And he ran over to me. A lot of the time, the kids are quite shy and you sign their autographs and they don’t really speak. And their parents are sort of pushing them forward and going: “No, go on.”

‘But Brads was like, bang. He jumped on my lap and started showing me his boots. It was weird. It was almost like he knew me from before. There was just this instant connection. I took him out on to the pitch that night for the game and held his hand.

‘After that, I just wanted to see him as much as possible. I spoke to our press officer, Louise, and tried to understand what kind of cancer it was he was suffering from and was it terminal and was there anything they could do for him. I was told it was something called neuroblastoma, but at that stage there was still some hope.

‘So I made contact with his mum, Gemma, and asked if I could go and see him. One time, he had a bad week and I went to the hospital with Seb Larsson, John O’Shea and Vito Mannone. We went to the hospital just to see him on a Thursday. I was standing there and he asked me to go and sit on the bed.

‘We had brought him some toys but he was in so much pain that all he wanted was a cuddle. He put the covers over me, put his head on my chest and fell asleep. Gemma took a picture and put it on Facebook and the picture went everywhere.

‘It was tough to see how much pain he was in. He was a six-year-old, not really understanding what was going on. Just every day waking up in pain and the pain getting worse and worse. When I was at Sunderland, he was always with me, walking out at games and things.

‘When it got to the point where we knew it was only a matter of time, all I wanted to do was be there for him and give him those happy days. We knew it was going to happen at any point. And also, I knew the feeling I got when I was with him. I knew that when he was around me, he was always happy, smiling, even when he was in pain.

‘His mum used to say to me it was mad because there were days when he would be in bed all day and he wouldn’t really eat much and then I would walk into the room and he has got energy and she couldn’t understand it. I think about him every day. Everywhere I go, the supermarket, wherever, people come up to me and want to talk about Bradley.’

Bradley, who will be honoured posthumously with the Helen Rollason Award at the Sports Personality of the Year ceremony in Liverpool tonight, had been diagnosed with neuroblastoma when he was 18 months old and the cancer spread through his chest, lungs, lymph nodes, bone and bone marrow but after major surgery and high doses of chemotherapy, he began to recover and went into remission.

THEN, a few months before he met Defoe, the cancer returned. His family began to raise money to pay for what they hoped would be life-saving treatment in America but last December they were told that his condition had become terminal. Football, and sport in general, did what it could to help. Bradley’s penalty in the warm-up before Sunderland’s game against Chelsea was picked as the joint winner of Match of the Day’s goal of the month last December. In April this year, Grand National organisers awarded Bradley an honorary 41st place in the race.

After that game when Defoe and Bradley first met, Everton donated £200,000 to the fund set up to pay for the treatment in the States that never happened. Joe Hart, the England captain, allowed Defoe to lead Bradley out at the head of the England team for a World Cup qualifier against Lithuania at Wembley in March.

Amid it all, Defoe’s friendship with the little boy who idolised him captured the imagination of the public. That was partly because of Bradley’s courage and cheerfulness in the face of so much suffering but it was also because people were touched by the depths of Defoe’s involvement with him. Footballers get a bad rap. They’re only supposed to care about money. This was clearly very different.

Defoe’s kindness struck a chord. English football is often accused of giving nothing back. It is take, take, take. But not this time. Defoe was like the game’s Good Samaritan. Defoe, whose Bournemouth side face Liverpool on the south coast today, stayed by Bradley’s side as the cancer advanced.

Defoe gave a lot but as he sits gazing out over the Bournemouth pitch in the week after two goals against Crystal Palace marked a return to form, he makes it clear he thinks about his friendship with the little boy in a different way. He thinks not about what he gave to the kid but what the kid gave to him.

‘He gave me a lot of things,’ says Defoe. ‘Having that experience with Brad... I have always been close to my family but I am even more so now because you can’t take anything for granted. Life’s