Stubbs the iron man who refused to give in to cancer

Two serious operations have made Everton defender determined to make the most of his second chance at Goodison Park

Alan Stubbs had just had a 12-hour operation in a Glasgow hospital to remove a tumour from the base of his spine, during which his bowels had to be taken out and put back again.

He had already had an operation to remove a testicle, which seemed to have foiled the testicular cancer with which he was diagnosed in 1999. But a lump had reappeared, and the chemotherapy had not zapped it, and here he was with tubes in his neck, arms, hands and throat, wired up to a machine which filled him with morphine every couple of minutes. The huge epidural needle – which had to be inserted four times because his back muscles were so strong and tight – had been inserted too high. It had not dulled the pain.

"Horrendous," he says, with feeling, "the pain was horrendous."

Outside the room were five of his friends, who had driven up from his native Liverpool to see him. At first the nurse refused them access, but relented when they said how far they'd come. She told them that they must on no account make him laugh. After all, he had only just been sewn up, and had a livid scar running from his breastbone almost to his pelvis. The nurse did not, however, take account of the fact that the five were from Kirkby, where it is mandatory to make other people laugh.

"They came in," Stubbs recalls, "and I'm lying there, looking at them out of the sides of my eyes, and there's one of them who's a real joker, and the first thing he says is 'bloody hell, that's the best I've seen you looking for 10 years.' It was killing me, laughing but trying not to."

For four days Stubbs was unable to feel any sensation in his legs, unable even to lift them from the bed. Yet after seven days he was discharged, astonishing doctors who had never seen anyone leave inside three weeks after such a major operation.

He was propelled home by a ferocious determination to play football again. Six months later he turned out for Celtic reserves. And shortly after that he was back in the first team. "The first game I played was at Hibs, and everyone in the ground was on their feet, giving me a standing ovation. That was really emotional." He chuckles. "And then I scored, so some of them Hibs fans must have been cursing me."

An even more remarkable display of support, he adds, had come when a banner reading "Get well soon, Stubbsy" was unfurled by the fans at an Old Firm match. By the Rangers fans. He was watching on telly. "To see that, out of all that sectarianism, all that hatred... that was a special moment."

We are talking in a portable building at Bellefield, the Everton training ground. Last summer Stubbs left Celtic for Everton, the team he had followed since he was a nipper. At a time when so many Everton traditions were imperilled, he revived one – that of the lion-hearted Scouser at centre-half, which extends back from Dave Watson to Mick Lyons to Brian Labone and beyond. Moreover, the defensive understanding between Stubbs and David Weir was one of the reasons Everton pulled away from the relegation zone towards the end of last season.

Another of the reasons was the new manager, David Moyes, who chose to drop Stubbs for a home game against Fulham. He has yet to regain his place, so it seems unlikely that he will play today at Goodison Park, against the champions, Arsenal. And surviving testicular cancer, not to mention having his bowels removed and put back, has not greatly altered his perspective on football. Chemotherapy, it seems, doesn't stop you being as sick as a parrot.

"The manager spoke to me [about being dropped], but it doesn't matter how they put it. He gave me one or two reasons, and I didn't think they were true. So I had my things to say, he said a couple of things, but as far as I'm concerned it was forgotten about a day later. These things happen in football and we're men, we should be able to take it on the chin. Anyway, football has a strange way of giving you another chance, and I'm going to get one when Davie [Weir] is suspended in a couple of weeks."

It can be risky playing for the club you support. I ask Stubbs whether he is worried by the example of Gary Speed, another boyhood Evertonian who ended up being booed by the fans and left acrimoniously?

"No, if I ever did have to move on I'd have the same affection no matter what. In Gary Speed's case, he actually wanted to go, and a lot of Everton fans were disappointed because he'd said he'd been blue from a kid. They probably expected a bit more loyalty."

Stubbs' devotion to Everton has already ridden the nasty jolt of being released as a youngster. He was on the books from the age of 11 until he was 13, but was let go, and snapped up by Bolton. When Bruce Rioch arrived as manager, bringing Colin Todd as his assistant, Stubbs' game blossomed. "I worked with Toddy quite a bit. His knees were scarred at the front and back, but even in training he never gave the ball away. He never used to move much but he didn't have to, his passing and vision was so good. I thought 'bloody hell, he must have been a class player'."

"Bruce was more approachable, although you'd be scared of doing it at times, scared of going to his office, because he'd be sitting behind his desk and he'd go 'come in' and look up over his glasses, and you'd think 'oh God'. He was tough if you got on the wrong side of him, but if you did well for him he'd look after you in all sorts of ways, like taking the wives out, he believed in all that sort of thing. He was a big influence on my career."

But Rioch left for Arsenal and in due course Stubbs felt he too needed a move. Celtic made an offer, but on the drive north to talk terms, he got a call from Rioch.

"He said 'don't do anything until you speak to me, I'm trying to get the OK from the board.' He wanted me and Jason McAteer at Arsenal, so I was doing about 40mph on the motorway, trying to give him as long as I could. He phoned again and said 'keep me informed, but I'm having a few problems' and then again to say that things weren't going the way he wanted. A couple of weeks later he left Arsenal, so maybe it was a blessing in disguise.

"And anyway I was really impressed with what I saw at Celtic. The stadium had an atmosphere about it with no one there, never mind when it was full. And me being a Protestant wasn't really an issue. Just before I signed [Graeme] Souness had changed things round, signing a couple of Catholics for Rangers. The die-hards were probably seething inside, but I think the majority were thinking, 'if we can get better players, so be it'. I really enjoyed my time there, even though career-wise it probably wasn't a great move. It wasn't the best football, and that was quite hard to get my head round. You'd play Rangers one week and then, no disrespect, you'd be going to Dunfermline or Motherwell where the changing-room was smaller than this [portable building], and those teams would put 11 behind the ball and try to hold out for the draw, which for them was a massive result.

"That disappointed me. Obviously one team was a lot stronger, but it was like Arsenal now playing teams towards the bottom. If you sit back against Arsenal, it's inevitable that with the quality they've got they'll find a way through. It's a situation waiting to happen. The same with Celtic. We had Henrik Larsson, and before him Pierre van Hoojidonk. But when teams came at us we had to concentrate more, work harder."

Masterminding all this, from June 2000 onwards, was Martin O'Neill. I ask Stubbs what the charismatic Ulsterman was like in the dressing-room? "Before games he was really psyched up. He used to go into his own little world, walk around the dressing-room looking at the floor, and you could see he was a picture of concentration, thinking what was going to happen in the game. Then he would tell us each what to do, about the opposing player, his pluses and minuses. Then he'd do the team talk, and you had to be there, to hear the way he was saying it, the way it came out of his mouth. You were just transfixed. He had a knack, something from within, of finding the right words. When he'd finished you were ready to do battle for him. And that first season we won the treble. He is without doubt the best motivator I've ever known, by far.

"The gaffer here [Moyes] is similar in that he tells us things we want to hear, that we're going to win and that, but he's different from Martin in that he's much more hands-on with training. He's very, very thorough. As the week goes on we do more and more on the team we're playing on the Saturday, what to look out for. With Walter [Smith, Moyes' predecessor at Everton] we did that by talking, but now we actually go out on the field and do it. I'm not saying that's better or worse. Different players respond to different tactics."

That Stubbs is still a player, indeed that he is still alive, owes much to a different kind of thoroughness. Following the 1999 Scottish FA Cup final he was called for a drugs test. "It was the last thing I wanted to do. We'd just been beaten 1-0, and worse than that, by Rangers. But I had to hang around, drinking drinks, so I could give a water sample.

"A few weeks later I was down in Manchester playing golf, and I got a phone call from my agent. He said 'you need to speak to the Celtic doctor, something about that drugs test.' I rang the doctor. He said 'have you been taking anything? You've come up positive.' I said 'that's impossible'. He said 'you're producing a hormone that's only found in pregnant women.' I've gone, 'I'm not pregnant, am I?' Then he said that when this hormone was found in men it could be a sign of cancer. He asked if I'd felt anything, and I said I had felt a lump in one of my testicles, but had thought it would go away."

The club sent a car to take Stubbs back to Glasgow, where, sure enough, testicular cancer was diagnosed. That was on the Friday. "The specialist said, 'when do you want this done?' and I said, 'let's do it Monday'. He couldn't believe my response. He said most people fall to their knees. But it was as if, as soon as he told me, I became a stronger person."

Throughout that and his later ordeal in 2001, Stubbs' fortitude has been inspirational to fellow cancer sufferers (he has also lent his name to a cancer charity – details below). And whatever surgeons have taken out of him, they have not removed any of his pride. When O'Neill offered to extend his contract he declined, because he thought the offer was inspired, at least in part, by sympathy. While acknowledging his huge debt to Celtic, he asked his agent to find him another club.

"And then one day he phoned me, and said he had sorted me out a club in the North-West. I said 'oh yeah, Man United?' He went 'no', I said Blackburn? Man City?' He went no, 'it's Everton, you fool'. Coming here, and pulling on the shirt, after all those years when I stood on the Gladwys Street, it's as if someone has said 'well done for everything you've been through, here's your reward'."

To donate to The Alan Stubbs Everyman Appeal, call 0800 731 9468

Alan Stubbs: The life and times

Name: Alan Stubbs.

Born: 6 October 1971, Kirkby.

Height: 6ft 2in.

Weight: 13st 10lb.

Position: Defender.

Current club: Everton (since 2001, 35 league appearances, 2 goals)

Former clubs: Bolton Wanderers (1990-1996, 181 league appearances, 9 goals); Celtic (1996-2001, 88, 3).

Career: Stubbs started his career with Bolton, having been rejected by Everton, the club he supported as a boy. Bolton were promoted to the Premiership in 1995, but only lasted a year in the top flight. The squad began to break up and Stubbs was sold to Celtic. In 1999, he was diagnosed with testicular cancer. After appearing to have beaten the disease, he suffered a relapse in 2000 and underwent surgery. In 2001, after 11 years as a professional footballer, Stubbs finally got the move to Everton that he had always wanted.

Major honours: 1998 and 2001 Scottish Premier League championship; 2001 Scottish Cup winner.

He says: "It is vital that men take more care of their health. Finding problems earlier means that they can be sorted out quickly and easily."

They say: "No one can ever imagine what he has gone through this season. He wanted to make an appearance before the end of the season so he could get his ninth appearance and qualify for a (championship) medal, but he did not want a sympathy vote. He's now proved he has earned that medal." Martin O'Neill, Celtic manager, after Stubbs had scored on his comeback after treatment.