Source: Northern_Echo
Saturday Spotlight: Mulligan grateful for Darlington chance
Former Middlesbrough trainee Nathan Mulligan has endured a traumatic time since being diagnosed with leukaemia six years ago. Now fit and well, he joined Darlington last month and told Assistant Sports Editor Craig Stoddart about his recovery.[LNB] FOR Middlesbrough's Academy team, the summer of 2003 heralded the beginning of a bright new future.[LNB] With the club finishing runners-up in the FA Youth Cup final the previous season, the likes of David Wheater, Adam Johnson, James Morrison and Matthew Bates were about to embark on a campaign that would thrust them into the spotlight, providing the platform on which their careers have been built.[LNB] Tony McMahon, Lee Cattermole and Gary Liddle, plus several others, were also part of a vintage crop of local talent that included Nathan Mulligan, a Stockton-born winger being mentioned in the same breath as Johnson and Stewart Downing.[LNB] But for Mulligan, the summer of 2003 would prove to be the beginning of traumatic six-year journey that has proved physically and mentally challenging in ways that few of his peers have experienced.[LNB] While his team-mates would again reach the prestigious Youth Cup final, this time winning the trophy by beating Aston Villa, Mulligan was left recovering from an illness that did more than merely threaten to end his football career.[LNB] At just 16-years-old he contracted leukaemia, a cancer of the blood that kills about 5,000 people in the UK each year.[LNB] In some of the papers recently it's said that I've come back from a careerthreatening illness. But it was more than just a careerthreatening illness, it was more life-threatening,[LNB] explained Mulligan, clearly well aware of what might have been.[LNB] He credits his high fitness level and a mental toughness as being key to his steady recovery, one that has ensured that the level-headed individual is grateful for a second chance that has come in the form of a contract at Darlington until the end of the season.[LNB] The 23-year-old takes his place in the squad for today's League Two home game with Burton Albion, having been plucked two weeks ago from non-league Norton & Stockton Ancients.[LNB] During three seasons in the Northern League, Mulligan combined a fierce determination and no lack of ability to earn another go at a football career, something which seemed a world away in July 2003.[LNB] That was when he had just returned for pre-season training when a routine medical suggested something wasn't right. Not that anyone could have imagined what lay in store.[LNB] His father, Mick, recalls: One lunch time I saw him coming round the corner after a run. He was hunched over coughing and spluttering and I was saying There you are, told you. You've had three weeks off, your fitness is down, you're going to go back to Middlesbrough half fit'. We thought it was a chest infection coming on.[LNB] Mulligan added: The day I signed my scholarship I went for a medical and there was something not right. I had to go back the next day and that's when it all came out. I remember it all quite well, unfortunately. I had to deal with it really quickly.[LNB] My first question was when am I going get back to playing football'. I didn't realise how serious it was. I was told I shouldn't be thinking about playing football again. They didn't put it in those words, but there was a blank expression on the doctors' faces when I asked.[LNB] Treatment began immediately. Put to one side were any career goals, instead Mulligan spent the next six months at the James Cook University Hospital in Middlesbrough.[LNB] Although regaining his health became the primary concern, that Mulligan would wear his Boro training kit while in hospital demonstrated exactly what his long-term goal was.[LNB] He continued: I was on a ward there first, and then I was on a haematology day unit and had a fantastic doctor called Angela Wood.[LNB] She was with me all the way through and I've already rang her to tell her about joining Darlington. She said she's even going to start following football now![LNB] I didn't like being in a ward because I was the youngest in there. So she used to put me in a side room on my own and would let me sneak out on day trips as long as I was back home by a certain time![LNB] Mulligan summarises his first three years after diagnosis thus: The first year was a full year of intensive treatment. The second year was treatment every three months but I was still able to do a bit of fitness to build myself back up and in the third year I was back playing football.[LNB] But that skims over the chemotherapy which, he says, was painful, not nice for anyone to go through. That lasted for four years in all, receiving treatment intravenously for the first two years before being in tablet form thereafter.[LNB] His father recalls the heartbreaking setbacks.[LNB] Everything that could go wrong, did go wrong, says Mick.[LNB] He had a blood clot which was a side effect of the drugs so then he had six months of heparin. Now, if you are on heparin for more than a year you have to stay on it for the rest of your life, and if that's the case then you can't do anything like play football.[LNB] Fortunately he came off it in time.[LNB] There was an infection too.[LNB] A brand new strain that none of the doctors had seen before, yet he managed to contract it.[LNB] Among regular visitors to his hospital bedside were Bates and Cattermole, who remain close friends.[LNB] He has since watched the pair of them in action for their respective teams, Middlesbrough and Sunderland, just as he did when recovering from leukaemia meant having to watch the run to the 2004 Youth Cup final from the sidelines.[LNB] Yet Mulligan's enthusiastic nature means he was delighted for his team-mates, saying: It kept my spirits high. I loved going to the games. I'd had a taste of it the year before when I was in the squad when we got beat in the final by Manchester United.[LNB] The next year I thought would be my year.[LNB] So it was hard in one sense but it was fantastic to see how the lads were doing.[LNB] Mulligan continued to recover as the weeks and months went by, growing stronger all the time, and he finally returned to Middlesbrough in 2005-06, playing in reserve and youth games during the third year of his scholarship.[LNB] But there was to be no fairytale ending. He was released at the end of his three-year contract yet, typical of an optimistic individual never one to let anything get him down, he says: I was disappointed but there was no bitterness at all.[LNB] I was really thankful to Middlesbrough for everything they did and I'm not the type to get bitter anyway.[LNB] Middlesbrough were really good to me. They had kept my three-year contract going and I'd always thought I will get through this and I will play football again'. I just maybe needed that extra year, which I didn't get.[LNB] In a sense I did think it could be all over. But you've always got that little glimmer of hope that someone might be watching.[LNB] Three years on and Mulligan has been proved correct as it transpires Darlington were watching the winger earlier this season, though it was last year that he was part of the first Norton side to win promotion to division one in 28 years.[LNB] That was the first year, believes his father, that the pacey winger has been back to his old self.[LNB] He said: I would say it has taken him five years in all to recover, and then in the sixth year he pushed on. He's now had two full years without any kind of treatment and that was the period when he has been able to be himself again, build himself back up in the gym.[LNB] What I've always said he's been waiting for is the two Ps: power and pace. Once he got them back I knew he'd be all right.[LNB] Winning promotion came in his third season at Northern League level, six divisions below League Two, and he admits to being surprised at being handed a step back up to the professional ranks, something that has put an end to his day job.[LNB] Until Quakers manager Steve Staunton called him three weeks ago, Mulligan had been teaching PE at primary schools in Acklam, Newton Aycliffe and Stockton.[LNB] He said: It came as a massive surprise. I've since been told I'd been watched for six games, in which I did really well.[LNB] I got the phone call on the Monday, I went in for training on the Tuesday and after that the manager said he would come and watch me on the Wednesday for Norton.[LNB] Honestly, I was really nervous knowing that a manager like Steve Staunton was coming to watch.[LNB] But I did really well and managed to score as well.[LNB] On the Thursday they offered me a contract, we travelled to Hereford on the Friday and I came off the bench on the Saturday it was a bit of a whirlwind week![LNB] Mulligan has not left Norton behind. Aside from the fact his father is chairman, there remains a Mulligan in the squad as brother Dale, who was once in Darlington's youth set-up, is a regular in the team.[LNB] Quakers' new winger intends to watch his brother and former team-mates as often as possible, though they will be at The Northern Echo Arena en masse for next week's game against Morecambe.[LNB] I could probably sell the ground out with all my friends and family! he joked and says Cattermole, who sponsored Mulligan's kit while at Norton, will be a regular at Quakers matches.[LNB] All the Norton lads are coming a week on Tuesday.[LNB] They were really buzzing for me. I've had numerous text messages off the lads, it's been fantastic. I'll still go and watch them, especially as my brother's there and all my friends. It's a good, family club, a lot of close-knit people together.[LNB] Yet, despite having suffered with leukaemia and being released by his hometown club, a further cruel blow came Mulligan's way earlier this year.[LNB] Lifelong friend Andrew Gibson died aged 22 in February, seven months after sustaining serious head injuries during a car accident in Dubai.[LNB] Bates marked the occasion at the end of a Middlesbrough game by unveiling a T-shirt bearing the message Memories last forever Gibbo'.[LNB] Clearly Mulligan has been through a lot and who would not wish him well as he bids to take his second chance[LNB] Of course it feels like I've got a second chance, he says.[LNB] I believe that if it wasn't for what happened my career could have carried on at Middlesbrough.[LNB] I believe in fate, that things happen for a reason. It happened, but I just had to deal with it and fortunately I've been handed this opportunity. I feel really fortunate and I'm determined to take it.[LNB] It's fantastic going into training every day, even though it's a long drive to Durham![LNB] Being involved in a football environment again, I couldn't think of a better job.[LNB] There's a massive smile back on my face and I've been buzzing for the last few weeks and will be for the rest of the season.[LNB]
