UNITED AGAINST CANCER - ARRAN'S STORY

At the Club's Annual Awards, held in the Invercarse Hotel on Sunday 15 April, a quite fantastic story was spotlighted when 14-year-old Youth Academy student Arran Leiper received the Youth Academy Special Recognition award from Youth Academy Manager Brian Grant.

February 2017 is a date that will live long in the memories of young Arran, his dad Malcolm and mum Gill. Arran had developed a black eye that then started to swell up. Concerned, the family visited the hospital, and only a week later, Arran was diagnosed with rare form of cancer called Langerhans cell histiocytosis (LCH). A tumour the size of his hand was growing in the brain cavity pushing out into his eye socket.

What followed was 53 weeks of chemotherapy and all through it, Arran continued to come along to training and matches when he could and "tried to act normal" as his dad Malcolm told us.

Arran received the news after a recent scan that he had won this battle with the disease and the family were allowed to finally show emotion with mum Gill admitting that she "burst into tears upon hearing the good news" before continually asking the doctor if she was 100 percent sure.

The culmination of this story was the Awards Dinner where Brian Grant's emotional speech held the capacity crowd's collective breath before the explosion of applause for Arran as he received his award. The standing ovation lasted for several minutes. Mum Gill remarked that it was at this point that Arran finally allowed himself to accept that what he had achieved was something out of the ordinary and for the first time in the whole episode he admitted to feeling "proud."

Arran's story shows a family who projected tremendous courage throughout adversity and the left-back himself demonstrated the desire, drive and heart that will be the standard bearer for application throughout the United Academy and everyone at Tannadice remains in awe of the courage of Arran.

Football can be a cut-throat business with many not making the grade at the various levels. Little favour is given but regardless of how Arran's future career goes, his family know just how much of a winner this young United fan from Broughty Ferry is. Arran has set himself the target of getting fitter and stronger and one day he hopes to play for the first-team here at Tannadice. Good luck young man.