A sunny day. A clear blue sky. The sort of day made for families, for the beach, for a barbecue.  But for us it was a different sort of family day, a CRY screening day in our son Tom's name at Tottenham Hotspur FC's White Hart Lane stadium.

 

It meant an awful lot to me. Spurs are my team, always have been. They were Tom's team too. He stuck with them through thick (not much) and thin (plenty) despite living in west London.  White Hart Lane was our place, where we'd go to watch a game & chat about football, life, the universe. It was one of the ways we got to know each other.

 

And then it was all over. Just like that, as countless CRY families know and have experienced.

 

Tom died aged 14 in 2007. We'd been to watch Spurs play not long before. He watched them on the TV the afternoon before we lost him.

 

So I hadn't been back to the Lane, hadn't wanted to. And when I saw the pictures of Fabrice Muamba collapsed at the stadium it brought back a lot of memories. Like others, I fervently hoped he'd pull through and, somehow, he did.

 

It occurred to me that part of the reason he'd survived was that he was an elite athlete who had highly qualified medical staff close at hand, unlike most young people.

 

It also occurred to me that Spurs have a track record of working in their local community, one of the most deprived parts of London.

 

So I approached the Tottenham Hotspur Foundation, which leads the community work, including health programmes, and asked if they'd consider hosting a screening.

 

In no time at all I found myself back at the stadium, along with CRY's Steve Cox, to meet Grant Cornwell MBE, the foundation's Chief Executive Officer, and Maria Abraham, the foundation's Health and Wellbeing Manager. They couldn't have been more hospitable or supportive. 

 

They recognised that heart screenings fitted with the type of health initiatives the foundation were already involved in.

 

Further, they understood the importance of access to screening for all young people, not just those at the top of their sporting professions.

 

So a plan emerged in which executive boxes would be used for the screenings with a large function room used as a waiting room.

 

Part of the publicity for the event would be a mention in the programme for Tottenham's last match of the season. That, no doubt, helped to ensure the screenings were quickly fully booked.

 

On the day, the foundation's Nicola Banks looked after things for the club and the screenings ran like clockwork. The CRY medical team remarked upon how good the facilities and lay-out were & how low the drop out rate was. 

 

So they were happy. And Spurs were happy. Was I happy? I was. 

 

I would rather have been at the stadium with Tom for a game, of course I would. I miss him every day. But this screening felt like a fine way to continue to remember him.

 

Paul Clabburn