My reason to get involved is because the UK Forums Allstars weekend gives me the opportunity to be part of something positive, that hopefully helps change lives - if only a little bit - with the added bonus of playing a few games of hockey.

Two years ago, as my father in law suffering with Prostate Cancer, it was an easy decision to make and I made my first appearance in the black and blue of Prostate Cancer UK. We didn’t take home this silverware that year, but I was lucky enough to get over £1k of donations again.

Kitting up for Prostate Cancer UK again in 2014, with the additional honour of the wearing the ‘A’, under the steerage of Chappy as our ‘C’, sponsorship wasn’t so readily available. A pseudo masochistic plan of offering up body parts to be waxed, as a reward for fundraising milestones, paid off, as I travelled to Sheffield with a chest as smooth (and as flabby) as a baby’s bum.

And this brings me full circle to the timing of being asked to Captain the Prostate Cancer UK team for 2015.

When I got ‘the calling’, I had not long returned from holiday and let me tell you, when you get the calling from David Grant, you feel like the honour that has just been bestowed on you, needs to be accompanied by smoke rising from the Vatican. I’m sure that anyone would be chuffed to be given the call, but for me, the call came around the same time that my father in law was admitted to hospital with pneumonia – a serious illness, when you are already quite ill, suffering with Prostate Cancer. So ‘the calling’ already has a great significance to me, as I’ve seen what was an ox of a man, with hands like shovels, gradually reduced to a quite frail old man.

I’m sad to say, the prospect of pulling on the jersey for Prostate Cancer UK in 2015 will be in memory, as my father in law lost his fight and has now passed away.

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