“I COULDN’T SWALLOW AN APPLE. MY SURGEON TOLD ME IF THEY DIDN’T OPERATE THEN, I’D BE DEAD THE NEXT WEEK”
For once there was no sense of fun; no razor-sharp wisecracks from one of football’s most lovable rogues. The player who lived the life of a maverick was now fighting for his: a tumour in his oesophagus the size of a golf ball was threatening to call time on Mickey Thomas. His madcap career had enriched the game, but in May 2019 the former Wales international was going under the knife after being diagnosed with stomach cancer three months earlier.
Thankfully, surgery was a success – so much that three years on, Thomas will be walking to the summit of Snowdon alongside Andrew Baker, the man who saved his life. For someone who often hit the heights as a waspish winger, the 67-year-old will look back down on the Welsh mountainside with real emotion.
“I want to give the people who operated on me some recognition because they don’t generally get that,” Thomas tells FFT. “You can’t do much better than save someone’s life. So I’m going to walk up Snowdon with the guy who saved mine. It’s amazing he’ll be walking next to me.”
Thomas’s ‘Walk For Life’ will raise vital money for the unit at Wrexham’s Maelor Hospital that ensured he’s still here now to tell the tale – and just a few more besides from his chaotic career. Before that, though, it took a former Manchester United pal to urge him towards medical help in the first place.
“Bryan Robson had recovered from throat cancer and noticed that I was having trouble swallowing,” says Thomas, referring to an
