30 December 2023 , 10:56
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Hope is a good thing, maybe the best of things, as Tim Robbins reminded Morgan Freeman in the Shawshank Redemption.
And with a New Year at the door, hope springs eternal at Luton Town, the spiritual home of optimism in English football. As he bids farewell to a testing 2023, former Hatters chairman Nick Owen can toast his club's completion of the long climb back from non-League muck and nettles to the penthouse.
He can marvel at the brazen audacity of manager Rob Edwards' perceived relegation fodder bowing and curtseying to nobody in the Premier League. And above all, the one-time breakfast TV presenter is thankful for the medical science which has turned his close encounter with prostate cancer into the smart money being on a happy ending.
Owen, now 76, missed the Hatters' promotion triumph at Wembley last May because he was preparing for life-saving surgery 48 hours later. But he is thrilled that Paddy Power, sponsors of our festive addiction to the Ally Pally darts, are donating £1,000 to Prostate Cancer UK for every 180 those marksmen hit at the tournament.
That's going to add up to around £1million by the time the tickertape falls. You've got to love the darts. Fun fact: Owen provided the first voiceover on former ITV hit show Bullseye. Anyway, now back at work on the BBC's Midlands Today programme, Owen's story is a must-read for men aged 50-plus or with a family history of prostate cancer.
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Here's the shorthand version: Get yourselves checked, fellas. One in eight of us will get it – but it's treatable if caught early. “Until this year, April 13 had always been a day of celebration in our household,” he observed. “It was the date when Luton beat Bristol Rovers 12-0 in 1936, with Joe Payne scoring 10 of them.
“Now it is seared in my mind as the day I was told I had aggressive prostate cancer and there was no time to lose if we were going to stop it. I will spare you the graphic details of a biopsy under general anaesthetic, but I had to go on a course of tablets before surgery a couple of days after the play-off final.
“Although I would have been physically able to go to Wembley, and I was invited to be part of the club's VIP party, I didn't want to run the risk of picking up an infection – whether it was Covid, flu, a cough – and precaution won the day. So it was a difficult decision to miss one of the proudest days in Luton Town's history, but I had to get the surgery done and dusted.
Luton Town beat Coventry City at Wembley in May (Kieran McManus/REX/Shutterstock)“It was a wonderful tonic to watch it at home with my wife and a couple of friends, with lots of excited text messages coming in throughout the day, and we celebrated with champagne.”
The operation went well and, crucially, Owen has since learned the cancer has not spread. He has started going to Kenilworth Road again, and he plans to be there for the Hatters' last game of a momentous year against Chelsea.
More than anyone, he can bask in Luton's return to top-flight orbit after he was left holding the fort when they were bundled out of the Football League, on the back of a crass 30-point deduction, in 2009. For four years they found some exotic ways to miss out on promotion – a hooligan rampage, a penalty shoot-out, an offside goal at Wembley and then being too hopeless even to make the play-offs – before John Still lit the path back to the EFL.
Owen marvelled: “We've gone from playing Tamworth to Tottenham, from Alfreton to Arsenal, from Ebbsfleet to Everton – it's a different planet from the one I inhabited as chairman for nine years from 2008-17.
Nick Owen has Luton Town deep in his heart (Marc Atkins/Mark Leech/Getty Images)“In the early days, we looked a bit bewildered by some of the one-twos and speed of thought in the Premier League, but we're starting to pick up points as we acclimatise to the standard. And some players, like Ross Barkley and Andros Townsend, have been like a great tribute to Mick Harford's recruitment – he landed two England internationals on free transfers in a market where you can easily spend £20 million on dead wood.
“I was devastated when I heard about Mick's prostate cancer diagnosis. He's been part of the fabric of Luton Town for 40 years, and his determination to keep working and stay positive was an inspiration when I learned of my condition.”
Either side of Christmas, Luton's attention has been diverted by club captain Tom Lockyer's cardiac arrest on the pitch at Bournemouth. Thankfully, hope won the day there, too, after the exemplary response of players, medics and the wider football community.
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“I wasn't at the game – I was keeping up to date from home,” said Owen. “But it was a terrifying, bone-chilling moment when we learned Tom had collapsed off the ball. The few minutes which elapsed between the alarm being raised, and confirmation that he was alert and responsive, felt like a lifetime, so goodness knows what his family were going through in the stand.
Luton Town captain Tom Lockyer suffered a cardiac arrest against Bournemouth earlier this month (PA)“This guy embodies the spirit and soul of Luton – a dynamic, all-action figure who epitomises our club. When he collapsed at Wembley, it was diagnosed as atrial fibrillation. That struck a chord with me because I went through the same thing and ended up in A&E. He had the same operation, the same corrective procedure as me. But cardiac arrest is different. The response of all the medical staff who treated him was miraculous in its speed and efficiency.”
Beacons of hope were not necessarily synonymous with Luton unless you looked up at the skies and saw the tail-lights of aircraft taking off from the airport, whisking holidaymakers towards sunnier destinations.
But Nick Owen, as decent in person as he is in front of the cameras, is happy to be a poster boy in the fight against prostate cancer – because every life saved is a better result than anything his beloved club can deliver on the pitch.