David Brooks: I thought I had lost spark for the game — but it was cancer. The midfielder, who overcame Hodgkin lymphoma, opens up about night sweats, tears, weight struggles and the renewed sense of privilege he now feels
David Brooks: I thought I had lost spark for the game — but it was cancer. The midfielder, who overcame Hodgkin lymphoma, opens up about night sweats, tears, weight struggles and the renewed sense of privilege he now feels
David Brooks: I thought I had lost spark for the game — but it was cancer
The Bournemouth midfielder, who overcame Hodgkin lymphoma, opens up about night sweats, tears, weight struggles and the renewed sense of privilege he now feels
A few weeks ago David Brooks had a check-up but while footballers are tested and treated all the time, this medical was different. The Bournemouth midfielder’s career was starkly interrupted 3½ years ago when he had stage 2 Hodgkin lymphoma diagnosed.
“I’m all good and healthy at the minute,” he says, smiling, relaxed.
A feature of the way the 27-year-old handled his cancer was to be calm and not catastrophise. When, in May 2022, he hoped he could be declared cancer-free, he was too busy to go back on to his hospital ward to ring the all-clear bell, and instead asked the doctor to phone him at home.
“It was a bit overwhelming, to be honest,” he says. “I was upstairs by myself at that point on the phone. I remember just going downstairs and telling my mum and dad, and Flora [his partner] was there at the time as well.
“There was, again, more tears and a little bit of a celebration but at that point I was trying to get back fit so I couldn’t go on a bender or anything like that. It was kind of just a nice moment for me and the family.
I didn’t cry at that point. There were obviously a few points that I cried, but it was just a bit of relief to find out that the treatment had worked. In my brain it had worked anyway. So it wasn’t like a massive weight off my shoulders. It was more just that it was all good and it was all right. And then it was trying to get back to work.”
The problem was, he tried too hard. He had lost weight at the start of his illness and then gained lots when on steroids, which meant he was putting too much strain on his body in training.
“I had been out for 12 months doing basically nothing,” He says. “And it is my fault a little bit. You know what [weight] you should be playing at. I got a sniff of playing under Gary O’Neil [the former Bournemouth head coach] because we had a few injuries and they were trying to stay up and obviously I wanted to help at that point, but I probably wasn’t too ready.
“I tried to play in an under-23s game and then my hamstring kind of just popped. I was meant to play half a game and then I was going to be on the bench on the Saturday and I got through 35 minutes and then it just pinged.”
It all delayed his return to Premier League action until March 2023, when he came off the bench at Villa Park to applause from the home fans as well as the away supporters.
Now I look back on it, it was obviously a really nice thing and it was a bit of an occasion. But at the time I’d waited two years to step back on the pitch. I wasn’t really thinking about anything else.
“I like knowing that I’ve managed to make it back to the top. I had a lot more football to give and the kind of heights that I wanted to get to when I was like 20, 21 and what I thought I could achieve. It would have been a shame for me if that was it.”
1 Comment
David Brooks: I thought I had lost spark for the game — but it was cancer
The Bournemouth midfielder, who overcame Hodgkin lymphoma, opens up about night sweats, tears, weight struggles and the renewed sense of privilege he now feels
A few weeks ago David Brooks had a check-up but while footballers are tested and treated all the time, this medical was different. The Bournemouth midfielder’s career was starkly interrupted 3½ years ago when he had stage 2 Hodgkin lymphoma diagnosed.
“I’m all good and healthy at the minute,” he says, smiling, relaxed.
A feature of the way the 27-year-old handled his cancer was to be calm and not catastrophise. When, in May 2022, he hoped he could be declared cancer-free, he was too busy to go back on to his hospital ward to ring the all-clear bell, and instead asked the doctor to phone him at home.
“It was a bit overwhelming, to be honest,” he says. “I was upstairs by myself at that point on the phone. I remember just going downstairs and telling my mum and dad, and Flora [his partner] was there at the time as well.
“There was, again, more tears and a little bit of a celebration but at that point I was trying to get back fit so I couldn’t go on a bender or anything like that. It was kind of just a nice moment for me and the family.
I didn’t cry at that point. There were obviously a few points that I cried, but it was just a bit of relief to find out that the treatment had worked. In my brain it had worked anyway. So it wasn’t like a massive weight off my shoulders. It was more just that it was all good and it was all right. And then it was trying to get back to work.”
The problem was, he tried too hard. He had lost weight at the start of his illness and then gained lots when on steroids, which meant he was putting too much strain on his body in training.
“I had been out for 12 months doing basically nothing,” He says. “And it is my fault a little bit. You know what [weight] you should be playing at. I got a sniff of playing under Gary O’Neil [the former Bournemouth head coach] because we had a few injuries and they were trying to stay up and obviously I wanted to help at that point, but I probably wasn’t too ready.
“I tried to play in an under-23s game and then my hamstring kind of just popped. I was meant to play half a game and then I was going to be on the bench on the Saturday and I got through 35 minutes and then it just pinged.”
It all delayed his return to Premier League action until March 2023, when he came off the bench at Villa Park to applause from the home fans as well as the away supporters.
Now I look back on it, it was obviously a really nice thing and it was a bit of an occasion. But at the time I’d waited two years to step back on the pitch. I wasn’t really thinking about anything else.
“I like knowing that I’ve managed to make it back to the top. I had a lot more football to give and the kind of heights that I wanted to get to when I was like 20, 21 and what I thought I could achieve. It would have been a shame for me if that was it.”