Carl Baker and Stockport

It's fair to say that many of the headlines regarding any sport at the moment seem to be negative. In Football you have diving, fisty cufts, whinging about X amount of time being added on, tapping youngsters up and so on. In the cutting edge world of Formula 1 you seemingly have young men driving into walls not only endangering their own lives but those of race officials and the paying public. To top it all off you have the rather bizarre yet strangely ingenious case of bloodgate in the world of Rugby Union. Yet these are the stories that continue to take over our back pages because they basically sell.

Meanwhile buried among the scandal and general bullshit about multi-millionaire sportsmen and companies you have the touching story of Carl Baker and Stockport County. You see the other week 26 year old Baker lost his older brother to Leukaemia, yet just a few short days later was able to turn out for Stockport County in a game away against Yeovil. Baker would score 2 goals for County in a 2-2 draw. After his first goal he ran to the dug out and held aloft a t-shirt with "For U Mike" written on it. During this celebration he was embraced by every single team mate. After the game had been completed he was ushered over to the travelling Stockport County supported by manager Gary Ablett where he was presented with a condolences card which had been signed by every member of the travelling support. Many of whom took it upon themselves to embrace him in a physical way.

Stockport County are currently in adminstration, the future of the club is one of extreme uncertainty. Living in the shadows of both Manchester and Merseyside giants means that attracting support can be a arduous task. Yet whilst both on and off the field troubles have taken their toll. The club has taken it upon itself to raise the awareness of Leukaemia. Everytime advertising space is sold the club are donating 30% of the fee to Leukaemia research and are selling off special edition pre-season shirts at auction with them fetching between £200 and £500 with all proceeds again going to Leukaemia research.

Due to way that the club has been handled by it's owners in the past the club has been somewhat harshly been labelled the "unprofessionals", this is no fault of any members of the support or playing staff and i do feel sorry for what they have often had to put up with. Yet the way they have embraced each other and have seemingly decided to get together behind this single cause has maybe gone along way to getting rid of that unwarrented tag.

Sadly it has also been revealed that Carl Bakers younger brother is also battling against the disease, i can only hope that both Baker and County win their battles for survival.


http://www.lrf.org.uk/