Death of a sportsman

Bruce Craven, Leeds United's fitness coach, was struck down by skin cancer this spring. He was 3

Even when death was stalking him, Bruce Craven lived his sporting life to the full. One Thursday he completed a six-mile run. Friday night was spent watching Leeds Tykes, for whom he once played rugby union. On Saturday, when he would normally have been working as part of Leeds United's medical team, he travelled to Dublin to see the Six Nations showdown between Ireland and England. But on Sunday, amid the tumult of Lansdowne Road, one seat remained empty.

Even when death was stalking him, Bruce Craven lived his sporting life to the full. One Thursday he completed a six-mile run. Friday night was spent watching Leeds Tykes, for whom he once played rugby union. On Saturday, when he would normally have been working as part of Leeds United's medical team, he travelled to Dublin to see the Six Nations showdown between Ireland and England. But on Sunday, amid the tumult of Lansdowne Road, one seat remained empty.

Craven's passing, at the age of 32, scarcely rated a mention in the media. He was the archetypal backroom man, a fitness conditioner who put his expertise and professionalism at the service of highly paid footballers. In December, he found a lump under his arm. Barely two months later, he was dead of the most serious type of skin cancer, malignant melanoma.

Dave Hancock, the head physiotherapist at Leeds United, is determined the suffering of his friend and colleague will not be in vain. He is using it to raise awareness of the disease - by educating people into examining their bodies for moles that bleed or itch, change shape or colour, and in looking after their skin - as well as to raise cash to fund research.

Craven was a true all-round sportsman, representing Lancashire schools at cricket before studying physical education at Carnegie College in Leeds, where he became a lecturer. He threw the javelin for Britain's Under-21 team as a protégé of Fatima Whitbread's coach, Wilf Paish; played on the wing for the Tykes; and worked for Castleford Tigers rugby league club before joining Hancock at Elland Road in 1998.

"Bruce was an extremely fit individual," Hancock recalls. "For instance, he'd done a sub-50 second 400 metres. He was always out in the freezing cold running with players recovering from injury, like Lucas Radebe. In the sort of vain society we have today, lots of young people, including footballers, actively try to get sunburnt. He was never like that.

"That's why the cancer diagnosis was such a shock. He thought the lump was a lymphoma, but when they removed it they found it was a secondary melanoma. They then removed the rest of his auxilla - the lymphatic system beneath his arm - and they thought he was in the clear.

"Three weeks later he collapsed and suffered an epileptic fit. A scan found he had multiple secondaries at the front of his brain. They started him on chemotherapy, and we did everything we could. We spoke to experts at the Imperial Cancer Clinic in New York; sent him to the Royal Marsden Hospital in London; and got the leading UK specialist, Professor Julia Newton Bishop, to give him a second opinion. It was scary because there wasn't much we could do. It was already too late."

Craven hoped he might be given a year to live. He talked of the power of positive thinking and steeled himself to fight the illness, drawing inspiration from the Leeds housewife and mother Jane Tomlinson, who has defied cancer to run a series of marathons.

Rapidly, viciously, the cancer spread. Craven had been told not to fly to Dublin because of his treatment, so he travelled by ferry. "I followed him out after our game with West Ham," Hancock explains. "When I arrived, around 11pm, Bruce was feeling unwell. He had a headache and stayed in. By 4am he was in a coma. By the afternoon he was dead."

Hancock's distress was compounded by frustration. He works in a state-of-the-art training facility, often striving to make a player available for selection more quickly after surgery or injury. And yet, when his colleague was sick, he could do nothing for him. "As a medical professional," he reflects, "that was the hardest thing to take."

Rather than dwelling on such feelings, he resolved to tell Craven's story in the hope of helping others. "The doctors thought Bruce's melanoma had been in his system for six years or more before it became critical. But everyone should be aware that it is curable - provided it is detected at an early stage. In Australasia, encouraging self-examination and providing information has helped slow its spread.

"In the UK, we tend to say, 'Let's get some rays, let's get a tan' when the sun comes out. Maybe it's because we don't see it as often. We don't realise the damage it does. The precautions - like avoiding the sun at its height, using 15+ sunscreen and covering up with hats and T-shirts - are simple. But 7,300 cases are diagnosed every year, 1,700 die from it, and the figures are growing. People playing sports are clearly at risk."

There was plenty of protective cream on hand on Sunday when Hancock, with Craven's girlfriend, Sian Jones, and the former Leeds manager Eddie Gray, ran the London Marathon in support of Cancer Research. Five days earlier, a celebration of Craven's life brought Alan Smith, Mark Viduka, Dominic Matteo, David O'Leary and Peter Reid back to Elland Road. Michael Vaughan, the England cricket captain, was present, as were a table of Twickenham-bound Tykes. Sir Bobby Robson, who was successfully treated for malignant melanoma, donated memorabilia for auction. The night raised more than £65,000.

One of Hancock's aims is to establish a walk-in clinic dealing with melanoma at a hospital in the city. Meanwhile, the current Leeds squad are paying tribute to the popular Craven by wearing the green ribbon of a skin-cancer charity on their tracksuits. They have also publicised the problem by attending a screening of moles and sun-damaged skin.

"Guys tend to dismiss such things in a macho way," says Hancock. "They think: 'It won't happen to me, why go to a doctor?' Yet here was a supremely fit individual who spent his life in a sporting environment. If it could happen to Bruce, it could happen to anyone."

Advice on melanoma and details of skin cancer charity campaigns can be obtained from the following websites: www.sunsmart.org.uk

www.cancerresearchuk.org.