Junior football manager secures life-saving equipment for club

Manager Mick Asquith has been campaigning since October to get a defibrillator for Tingley Athletic and he organised a 150-mile walk to Bridlington next year to raise the £5,000 needed for one.

And after raising nearly £800, football charity Goals 4 Hearts have loaned the club the equipment, until they can afford it.

Mr Asquith, 39, of Navigation Walk, Thornhill Lees, said: “It’s very nice of the charity to lend us one before we have reached our target because I know how vital this life-saving equipment can be.

“I was born with heart problems and when I passed out five years ago, the doctors fitted an internal defibrillator inside my chest.”

Mr Asquith’s implantable cardioverter-defibrillator, which is similar to a pacemaker but bigger, works to correct and stabilise irregular heart rhythms by giving the person a shock.

Mr Asquith added: “It has given me a sense of safety that I just didn’t have before - I want everyone at the football club to feel that as well.

“And because we have it now, it might save a life at a match this weekend, or the next weekend.

“The whole campaign has brought the club closer together.”

The club has used the money it has already raised through sponsorship to pay for a lock-box, which the device will be kept in, and it will be placed on the outside of the clubhouse, in Casson Avenue.

Mr Asquith will be doing his walk in April next year, to donate log on to www.justgiving.com/defib