Ex-Premier League football scout saw GP as soon as he spotted symptom - then he received awful news

A former Manchester United football scout has been spared invasive surgery and given the all-clear after he was diagnosed with cancer last year.

Tom Critchley, 76, from Astley in Wigan, has spent almost 30 years spotting future Premier League stars and has helped give the likes of Danny Welbeck, Phil Bardsley and Michael Tonge a heads up in their football careers.

The grandfather-of-three, who also worked as a corporal in the Royal Engineers and now works as a club singer, was diagnosed with early stage rectal cancer last April. Tom said he booked an appointment with his doctor as soon as he spotted possible symptoms of bowel cancer.

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“It was a massive shock to be diagnosed with cancer as I’ve always been fit and healthy,” Tom said. “But I knew I wanted to get treatment right away.”

Tom lost his wife Eileen to cancer when she was 54. She was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer and died just five weeks later. It’s because of this that Tom said he felt he didn’t want to wait around any longer than necessary and began to look into his options.

Having been referred to The Christie NHS Foundation Trust, he took the opportunity to sign up for a ground-breaking cancer trial called Aphrodite. The trial investigates whether a higher dose of radiotherapy than normal can increase the chance that rectal cancer can be treated without painful surgery.

Patients may also avoid the need for a stoma, where an opening in the abdomen is connected to the digestive or urinary system to allow waste to pass out of the body.

“People don’t go on clinical trials because they are frightened