When cancer came to play, Andy laced up his boots
When my friend was diagnosed with cancer, he found strength from his wife, his faith but also sport.
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There’s no textbook for cancer, no prescribed way to respond to the war within, says the writer.
ST ILLUSTRATION: MANNY FRANCISCO
On a football field my friend Andy’s slide tackle was a thing of venomous beauty. In the mid-1980s he’d gallop towards strikers like one of the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, sliding through damp grass, cannoning into the ball, sweeping players off their feet. I winced and felt grateful I was on his team.
Intensity was his second skin and fun was an abraded knee. He’d stop hockey penalties with his chest and used beer as his painkiller. He was in his 20s then, my journalistic colleague in Kolkata, intoxicated by his invincibility as we all were, a grinning, scrapping, macho, proud amateur athlete of physical splendour.
