Cup heroes coming home for charity

Chasetown are pulling out all the stops to help a teenage fan with incurable cancer achieve his dream of raising £50,000 for charity.

Not that 18-year-old Stephen Sutton needs a lot of help from his beloved Evo-Stik Northern Premier League club who are organising a fundraising match in May to support his efforts for the charity Teenage Cancer Trust.

So far the Scholars supporter has raised more than £10,000 for the charity with his hard work and amazing powers of persuasion - his efforts have even included enlisting forty staff from Npower's Burntwood base to take part in a sponsored two day climb of England's highest mountain, the Lake District's Scarfell Pike!

While the teenager's individual fundraising continues, the Evo-Stik NPL First Division South club are now gearing up to come to his aid on Sunday 12 May when many of Chasetown's FA Cup heroes from their tie against Oldham back in 2005 will take on their 2008 stars who eventually bowed out to Cardiff City.

As well as the match between the Chasetown Oldham XI and Chasetown Cardiff XI at The Scholars Ground, the club is planning a whole series of fun family events to run simultaneously on the day in order to raise as much cash as possible for their fan's chosen charity.

Chasetown spokesman Paul Mullins said: "We are still very much in the early stages of the planning of the event but Chasetown FC and Chasetown Supporters Club are proud to announce we are supporting Stephen Sutton's wish to help organise a charity football match.

"Stephen is a local young man who has a 46 item wish list of things to do in his lifetime and he's already generated a lot of local publicity. The aim for the footballing part of the day is for a match involving Stephen's footballing friends and then a match between the Chasetown team that played Oldham in 2005 and the Chasetown team that played Cardiff."

A host of former players from the Cup runs have said they're looking forward to playing and Mullins added: "Already Simon Bryan, Matt Bytheway, Chris Slater, Craig Harris, Lee Bullimore, Charlie Blakemore, all-time leading scorer Tony Dixon, Lee Evans, Kyle Perry, Craig Holland, Danny Smith and Sam Smith have confirmed their availability. We're also hoping to get a West Brom former player to play as Stephen Sutton is a also WBA fan."

Chasetown's CEO Mike Joiner is delighted to support the end of season charity fundraiser. He said: "Having seen some weeks ago a wish list from Stephen there appeared to be one item on the list that we as a club could offer, that being a football ground, and knowing our Supporters Club, they would take on the match arrangements along with Stephen's wishes. So from Chasetown Football Club we hope to provide Stephen with a platform to hopefully reach his goal."

For more details on the event and the fan's mission visit: www.facebook.com/stephensstory