Last weekend, you’d have been excused if you’d driven past Broadmeadows Valley Park, home of Hume City, and done a double take.
You’d have seen Thomas Sorensen, Fahid Ben-Kalfallah, Rashid Mahazi, Jai Ingham, Rodrigo Vargas, Vince Lia, Alan Davidson and other popular football, A-Leagues and National Premier League figures, all on the same park, playing a friendly match.
The star of that match was Hume City’s Danny Dixon.
Dixon is currently undergoing chemotherapy in his treatment for testicular cancer, and Sunday’s event was a joint effort between the Professional Footballers Australia and the DT38 Foundation.
“It was amazing,” Dixon said.
“The foundation are doing an amazing job educating people.
“To be able to be part of it on Sunday was so good and hopefully we can keep doing events to get everyone together and keep raising awareness and helping the foundation as much as we possibly can.”
The funds raised will go towards helping his medical costs, as well as to the DT38 foundation, set up in memory of the late Dylan Tombides, who we lost in 2014, to raise awareness about testicular cancer and educate about the need for self checking, and acting swiftly.
Significantly, Dixon was able to act quickly upon his diagnosis thanks to the work and awareness of campaigns DT38 has conducted over the last eight years, especially in the football community.
“As we power into our eighth year everyone at DT38 is more committed than ever to raising awareness of testicular cancer by educating men, women and boys about the risks of the disease, how to catch it and what to do about it,” Donna Guiffre, Head of Media & Operations for DT38 Australia, explained to KEEPUP.
“Simply put, check yourselves once a month, know the symptoms you’re looking for and make sure you contact your GP and insist on an ultrasound scan if you notice anything down under which matches the recognised symptoms.
“Of course, for us to reach out almost daily to share these important messages does need to be funded and that’s where our events come in.
“On Sunday we saw the Victorian community band together to support Danny and make sure he knew that he wasn’t fighting this disease alone.
“With every radio interview, every event appearance myself and the team have one goal and one vision: What happened to Dylan never happens again.”
April is also Testicular Cancer Awareness Month, a significant platform for DT38’s mission.
“Our mission is to raise awareness and change the stigma associated with men’s health issues with a focus on testicular cancer,” Giuffre added.
“We aim to do this through providing educational programmes and opportunities for the youth of our community, to help shape a generation of children who are self- aware about their health and wellbeing.
“We are continuously having our free scans.
“The last scan we saw almost 100 past and present footballers attend to get their balls checked plus the general public.”
For more information about DT38, visit here: https://dt38.co.uk/
