We lost our 16 year old son Daniel in September 2005. Daniel went off to play a football match and died after scoring a goal.
We found it very hard to cope with the fact that Daniel had never been ill and he was a very fit young man. He played for two football teams and sport was his life.
The only thing we could focus on was the fact he had died doing something he loved but it still did not feel right that someone so young and sporty should die from this.
I am not sure how I ever found CRY but I am glad I did because it gave me a purpose to help raise funds so that this thing could be prevented in the future and that screening should be considered by sports clubs.
I work for Tesco and with the help of my colleagues we set about a fundraising event. We all wore football shirts and had two days of collecting in store. The customers and staff and played a big part in this. Next we held a quiz night and local companies all donated prizes to be raffled, both events were a great success.
One of my colleagues runs a club and they raised £101 which they asked me to put towards what we had already raised for CRY.
Our next task is going to London to meet with the FA – a meeting which our local MP Andy Burnham arranged – to see what they intend to do about this problem.
Andy has been behind us all the way and given us full support and we could not thank him enough for helping us with this.
Sadly, News Years Day I lost a good friend and colleague and his wife expressed her wishes that rather than flowers she would like donations to be sent to CRY as her husband Jack admired so much what we were doing. The donations amounted to £1135.
For a small town like Atherton the community really pulled together on this and we have another fundraising event in the pipeline.
Dionne Young
