17-year-old goalkeeper coach fighting bone cancer after feeling 'pain in his knee' following matches

Tom Moore's family are now raising money to thank doctors and nurses who are supporting him through his battle.

The 17-year-old has been playing football since the age of seven across many different clubs including Cannock Town and Stafford Town.

Last season, he was helping Burton Manor U18s when he first mentioned feeling pain in his knee after each game, something which was initially put down to overplaying.

At training, however, Tom still complained of soreness, so his mother and father, Joanne and Gary Moore, from Weston-under-Lizard in South Staffordshire, took him back to the GP who suggested he see a physiotherapist.

It was recommended that Tom did exercises, but the pain persisted, and in the last game of the season had to come off after 10 minutes.

Joanne said: "In June, we went back to the physio who suggested as a precaution to get an MRI scan done expecting this to be at worst a torn ligament or cartilage.

"While away on holiday abroad our GP called to say the MRI was showing something abnormal so we cancelled the rest of our holiday and flew straight back to have more tests.

"We landed on the Tuesday and Wednesday we went straight into Royal Orthopaedic Hospital for scans where we were told by a consultant that Tom has Osteo Sarcoma (bone cancer) in his left knee.

"This was devastating news for us as you can imagine.

"The following day he had the biopsy to confirm the grade of cancer and this showed that it is high grade."

Since that day, the family have been in and out of the hospital and back and forth to clinics for scans and X-rays.

The current plan for Tom is for him to have six lots of chemotherapy to shrink the cancer, followed by surgery to remove the whole knee and input a specially made replacements.

Following this, Tom will have to go through six more sessions of chemotherapy, followed by intensive physiotherapy to regain mobility.

Tom had courses of chemotherapy on August 23 and September 9, with surgery planned for November.

Joanne said: "We’d like to share and publicise what's happened in order to warn others but to also physically do something tangible as a way of ‘thanks’ to the doctors and nurses that are currently providing Tom's immediate care.

"We would like to raise funds to be able to provide the Young Persons Unit that looks after 16 to 24-year-olds with sarcoma with equipment they need as well as recreational equipment that makes their stay a little more normal.

"We’ll be doing various initiatives to raise funds and achieve our goal and this page will be the conduit to track and show what’s been accomplished."

A JustGiving page has been set up by the Moore's and has already raised £2,956, despite an initial target of £2000.

The family will use the page to share the planned activities and events as and when details are finalised.

The page can be found at justgiving.com/crowdfunding/the-moore-family