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 on Sunday night, 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 on Sunday, 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 short. The people that are around you that you love, you need to really express that.
‘I looked at Brad and thought, “How is this fair?” He never really got an opportunity to have a life. It makes you understand what’s important in life.
‘Maybe I’ve realised there is more to me than just football. As footballers, you think: “This is all I can offer, just kicking a ball around.” It’s something that you love and you’ve always dreamed of doing it. But I can look at the bigger picture now.
‘And kids of my own? Yeah, I want about six now. I have always loved kids. I have got a nephew, Chase, but being with Bradley has made me want kids more.
‘The love I had for Brads would be the love I’d have for my own kids. My mum says the level of love you have for your kids is different to anything else. When she’s telling me to do something, I’m saying: “Mum, give me a break, I’m 35.” She says: “One day, you’ll realise you’re still my baby.” It’s a different sort of love.’
The other thing that Bradley Lowery did for Jermain Defoe? Bradley changed the way people looked at him. They started to like him more. They started to see beyond the image of a shallow man who was only interested in scoring goals and going on a string of first dates.
He made it more likely that people would focus on the good things Defoe does. He launched his own foundation in 2010, for instance, and in February he will host a dinner to raise money to rebuild homes and schools in Dominica, the birthplace of his late father, which was devastated by Hurricane Maria this year.
So Bradley made people aware of the real Jermain Defoe: the man who w
as brought up in the Christian faith, who has always valued his family above all else, who has never tried to hide his roots, and who has always tried to do the right thing.
‘It’s changed the way people look at me massively,’ says Defoe. ‘When I was younger, the football stuff was always positive at West Ham and Tottenham but there was this perception that I was not really a bad boy of football but a ladies’ man. I didn’t want to be on the front page of the papers. But I didn’t really feel I was doing anything wrong.
‘I was young, playing football, single. I thought that some of the stuff that was written about my personal life was a bit harsh. You never saw pictures of me coming out of nightclubs drunk. All I wanted to do was focus on my football. I always thought that at some point people would be able to see the real me.
‘I’ve never changed. I’ve always been the person that has remembered where I’ve come from. An east London background, a working-class background. But now people understand what I’m really about. I love my football, I love my family and I love helping others. It’s the way I’ve been brought up.
‘People say: “Thank you for what you did for Bradley.” I tell them they don’t need to say thank you. People say to my mum: “Credit to you for the job you’ve done with your son, he’s really normal and humble.”
‘And I start laughing because it’s weird. Of course I’m normal. I’m from east London. It’s real. What you see is what you get.
‘When you are young, all you really think about is football and maybe you don’t really recognise or understand about other things. As you get older, you understand there are other things going on in the world.
‘I’ve been blessed enough to play for top clubs and play for my country and you realise how big football is and off the back of that, you can touch other people’s lives. As I’ve got older, I’ve realised I can make an impact on other people.
‘I’m from a Christian background. I just believe if you treat people in a certain way... try and be a good person.
‘My family would say: “So long as God knows what you’ve done, it doesn’t really matter who else says anything.” It’s not about getting recognition or getting in the papers. It’s just doing something. And I know the feeling that I get from doing something. Even if you can change one person’s life, that’s special.’
By the time he died, Bradley had changed Defoe’s life, too. He passed away, surrounded by his family, on July 7 and a week later Defoe attended his funeral at Blackhall Colliery in County Durham. Defoe wore an England shirt with Bradley’s name on the back. A row of Bradley’s favourite superheroes, including Batman, Spiderman and Captain America, saluted as the little coffin was carried into St Joseph’s church by family and friends.
‘We walked from Gemma’s house to the church,’ says Defoe. ‘The streets were packed like a carnival. The only thing that made me smile that day was seeing the Newcastle and Sunderland fans together in their black and white and red and white shirts and all hugging. That was powerful. I could never have imagined seeing that and a six-year-old made it happen.
‘He only had a short life but maybe it was his calling to raise awareness of the cancer he was suffering from. He helped so many people. And he changed so many lives. Including mine.’
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