Pershore Town raise more than £600 from match for Oscar Saxelby-Lee

Town had already planned to hosted Bromyard Town at the Community Stadium, Pershore, but top brass turned it into a charitable event having heard of five-year-old Oscar’s need to find £500,000 for pioneering treatment in his battle against leukaemia.

All gate receipts, donations and the proceeds of a raffle for two tickets to the club’s sportsman’s evening with ex-England defender Neil ‘Razor’ Ruddock tonight going to the cause.

The CAR-T cell therapy that Oscar needs is currently unavailable on the NHS with doctors saying he has a three-to-five-week window to travel to Singapore for the costly lifeline.

“We haven’t totted up every penny yet but we did get more than £600,” said Pershore Town chairman Paul Loader.

“That is without the £50 donation offered by Littleton and an online contribution from Chris (Pinder, chairman) Malvern Town.

“Considering we only had 24 hours to pull it all together, to make what was just going to be an ordinary friendly into a charity game, I am really pleased.

“You always want more, of course, but with the fact that it was a horrible, wet day it was good to raise that much money and to be involved from a community point of view.

“To have all of the players and supporters contributing like that, with donations for the raffle and things like that as well, plus people from fellow clubs around the area, showed the true spirit of football at our level.”

First-team manager Les Jones added: “The players were quick to say they would chip in a fiver each and it was great to raise some money for the young lad.

“I know it is not a lot but as soon as we heard about Oscar everyone at the club wanted to do something to help.

“The whole thing made me very proud of everyone at the club, we all made the most of it despite some miserable weather and I just hope what we did can benefit Oscar.”

Pershore won the match 4-2.

Click here to donate to Oscar's fundraising page