Anfield Road

TIME for a plug for a very good cause. Before you click “back”, this isn’t a plea for money. You can still send some if you can find some to spare. But we’re asking you for something far simpler than that.

Spit. We want your spit.

Or to be more accurate Anthony Nolan want your spit, sent in a special container they’ll provide (they call it a ‘spit kit’), so that they can add you to their register of donors of bone marrow and blood stem-cells. It’s as easy as that.

Anthony Nolan is an organisation that saves the lives of people with blood cancer, people who need a bone marrow or stem cell transplant. The charity began in 1974 when Anthony Nolan’s mother set up the world’s first bone marrow register. By matching willing donors with those who desperately need one of these transplants Anthony Nolan help two people every day. Money donated to the charity is used to maintain the register, to help in the bid to recruit more donors and also to help fund research into ways of helping future sufferers of this awful illness.

But why should you “give a spit” anyway? And why are we talking about this on this website?

Summer 2010 looked like being one to remember for goalkeeper Brad Jones. He was on his way to South Africa with the Australian squad for the World Cup and was set to leave the club he’d been with for 11 years – Middlesbrough – to join Premier League Liverpool as back-up for Pepe Reina. The biggest problem he could probably envisage was that he was joining the club in the middle of the turmoil that Liverpool were in at the time. The summer looked good.

Then, already on duty with Australia, he got some shocking news, the kind of news that anyone with kids of their own, or a little brother or sister, or a young niece or nephew, dreads hearing. His son, Luca, had been diagnosed with leukaemia. Luca was just 4 years old at the time and the treatment was painful; chemotherapy and then a stem cell transplant.

It saved his life, but it remains a battle for Luca, a painful battle that has included more chemotherapy and further bouts of illness, but a battle he can only fight because of the kindness of those who have joined the register.

It doesn’t really need to be said, or it shouldn’t need to be said, but not only did Brad miss that World Cup but he spent his first season at Anfield having to contend with the trauma of his little lad’s illness.

It’s not easy being a sub-keeper at the best of times but to be in this position at a new club with the worries Brad had in the background required great strength and character. How can you think about football when your son’s unwell? How can you not think about football when it’s your livelihood?

Brad joined Liverpool to be ready if we needed him, to be there if circumstances left us without the established first-choice keeper Pepe Reina. In return he needs our support. He doesn’t need a handful of idiots slagging him off, he needs to know we’re there for him, that we’ve got his back.

And one way of showing that support is to get on that register.  It’s not hard to get on the register but there is a shortage of people willing to get their names on it. According to Anthony Nolan,  43% of 18-25 year-olds said they were reluctant to register because they thought donating would be painful.

Yet, as Anthony Nolan point out: “In fact, more than 80% of donors today do so via a process where stem cells are taken from the blood stream.” They quote 25-year-old Callum MacDonald-Wood, a donor from Leeds, who said: “Donating was a bit like giving blood. I was hooked up to a machine that took the blood out from my arm and filtered it, then the blood went back into my body via my other arm. It took about four hours, but there was no pain. I could have saved someone’s life.”

If you are chosen as a donor you won’t be doing this every week – you might not even do it twice – but you’ll be saving someone’s life when you do. The people Anthony Nolan needs most is men aged between 18 and 30. At the moment only 12% of the donors on the register are.

The need for more donors couldn’t have been made any more obvious than when a match couldn’t be found in time for nine-year-old Elliot Wild to receive a stem-cell transplant. He made an appeal on Liverpool’s TV channel and captured a lot of hearts when he interviewed Pepe Reina for the channel but sadly he lost his fight and died in March.

For Luca, for Elliott, for countless others around the country and all over the world please find the time to get one of the “spit kits” and get yourself on the register.  Go here to get started: anthonynolan.org/What-you-can-do/save-a-life.aspx.

If you’ve already registered and think you can work your magic to persuade ten more mates to join the register, go here and join in with the “Get 10” campaign: anthonynolan.org/What-you-can-do/Grow-the-register/GET10.aspx.

And if you do have a few quid to spare please consider donating to the JustGiving page that Brad Jones’ partner Dani Lawrence has set up in support of Anthony Nolan. As an extra incentive, if you donate over a fiver and include your Twitter name in your message you will be entered into a draw to win a signed Liverpool shirt. See justgiving.com/Dani_Lawrence for details.

Above all else – give a spit.

anthonynolan.org/spit

* If you’re based outside the UK and want to become a donor you’ll be able to find details of similar registries in your own country through this link: www.bmdw.org