Chance to win autographed Premier League match shirts.
West Bromwich Albion goalkeeper Ben Foster is getting ‘shirty’ with his Premier League opponents to raise funds for blood cancer charity Cure Leukaemia. The Baggies star has been a supporter of Cure Leukaemia ever since he took part in their London 2 Paris ride in 2015 and he is determined to raise as many funds as possible towards the charity’s £1million Centre Appeal this year.
Here’s a video of Ben discussing the shirts: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3sLzLcXAzfI
The England International, who has excelled for West Brom this season, has been collecting shirts from the Premier League stars he has been battling every week and intends to auction them all to raise vital funds. Highly sought after match worn shirts from players such as Petr Cech, Riyad Mahrez, Romelu Lukaku and Thibaut Courtois will be available in the coming weeks with the first, a signed, match worn Jermain Defoe Sunderland shirt, currently available right now on ebay here
With Defoe hitting the headlines recently for England, Ben was keen for this shirt to kick his fundraising off and kindly agreed to split the proceeds with Bradley Lowery’s Fight, the charity setup to support a 5-year-old boy battling neuroblastoma who has struck such a personal chord with the Sunderland striker Defoe in recent weeks. The auction for this shirt will close on Friday April 7th at 4pm. The remaining shirts will be posted on ebay in the coming days and weeks with 100% of the winning bid going to Cure Leukaemia’s appeal to expand the Centre for Clinical Haematology at Birmingham’s Queen Elizabeth Hospital in 2017.
Two shirts will go live at 7pm Thursday 6th April. One is the match worn Riyad Mahrez shirt from Leicester City’s Premier League winning campaign and the other Romelu Lukaku’s shirt from Everton’s recent 3-0 Premier League win over West Brom, a match in which the Belgian striker scored. Every week between now and the end of the season will see two more shirts made available with all the details of when and where available here
One shirt, however, is being set aside for a different fundraising process and is expected to raise substantial funds for the charity.
Manchester United’s Spanish goalkeeper David de Gea kindly signed and donated his match worn shirt to Ben back in December 2016 and this fantastic collectable could be won by anyone who donates £10 or more on his JustGiving page
Everyone who donates £10 or more to this page will have the chance of their name being drawn out of the hat by Ben to win the shirt in Blood Cancer Awareness month later this year. Ben is taking part in the inaugural Velo Birmingham cycle race on September 24th (fixture permitting). Ben also hopes to ride the first few stages of the Tour de France one day ahead of the professionals with Geoff Thomas in his Three Tours Challenge team before West Brom’s 2017-18 pre-season kicks off.
Ben said: “I really hope these shirts can raise significant funds for Cure Leukaemia. We sometimes forget, as footballers, how much fans value shirts and especially those worn by their favourite players so this is a way I can really help this year.”
“I want to thank all of the players who have been so generous in donating their shirts and I really hope the public respond and get their bids in because it is all for a tremendous charity in Cure Leukaemia.”
“I will continue to collect the shirts after every match West Brom play so I’m sure we could start having some banter with the fans on social media to ask which player’s shirt I should go and ask for after the game.”
