Playing Amateur is Everything
It might not seem much to you sat in front of your computer right now, but for William Hamilton, it’s a moment of glory he thought he’d never see - playing for his Amateur Football Team.
Dreams of pulling the Embo shirt back on kept him going through month of treatment after he was diagnosed with testicular and abdominal cancer aged 19.
With searing honesty, William told his story on his weblog - which appeared in the Daily Record last March.
Now, after more than a year in remission, he has received some more good news. He’s fit enough to make a full comeback as the Embo team goalie in the North East-coast league.
Now 21, William, of Embo, Sutherland, said: “It’s friends like these boys from the football team who got me through cancer.
“I hung up the team colours in my hospital room and they helped even in some of my darkest moments.
“I’d played football with those boys since I was 16 and gone to school with most of them too.
“That’s why playing with them again feels like something so big - as big as if I was running out on to Ibrox and playing for Rangers.”
He’d been diagnosed with cancer on March 14, 2005 - and only seven months later, his mum died after a stroke.
William lost five stone, nearly half his body weight, during months of surgery and chemotherapy. Now alone without his mum’s support, it meant the world to know he still had friends.
He said: “I’d been in remission for only two weeks when my mum died.
“I’m glad she was still around to see that my cancer had gone. I had so much to live for. I wasn’t ready to go yet so was up for the fight.
“I had support from close family but my friends were fantastic. I was stunned when they handed over all that money they’d raised.”
Now William is ready to slot back in to second year at university in Dundee to continue studying history and politics.
“Cancer has mademe more relaxed about life. Life is a gift and you cannot have any regrets. Things that would bother me before just don’t now.”
But William added: “I am more than the boy who beat cancer.
“When anyone says how I am looking so good, I joke that I have always been good looking.
“I hope I’ll live to be 100 but I also know that life is a very delicate thing.
“I have no doubt in my mind that the support I got from everyone helped me to win my battle.
“To anyone who is fighting cancer or serious illness right now, I would say never give up hope. You can beat it just like I did and you will come out of it stronger than before.”