Stuart Gray announces his cancer battle with over £20,000 raised through Go Fund Me

Stuart Gray has announced that he has been diagnosed with cancer at the age of 49.

Born into Leeds United royalty where his Dad Eddie and Uncle Frank are revered as part of the great Don Revie sides the teenage Stuart returned to Glasgow as a teenager to go through the ranks at Celtic.

Playing at Giffnock North and in the Reserve League West he was a team-mate of Brian O’Neil, Brian McLaughlin, Mark Donaghy and Billy Dolan.

Gray went on to play 28 first team matches in the mid-nineties but was troubled by injuries before moving to Reading when Tommy Burns took over as manager in 1998.

There is regular contact with former Celtic team-mates on his Instagram account as well as updates on his five kids but on Wednesday he had something very serious to post as he revealed his conditions and set up a Go Fund Me page which so far has raised more than £20,000.

Explaining his conditions he revealed:

I was recently diagnosed with stage four Cholangiocarcinoma, which is a very rare and highly aggressive form of cancer that forms in the bile ducts. Sadly, by the time this cancer begins to show symptoms, it is usually too advanced for surgery, which is currently the only potential cure.

To make my condition even more complex, I was also recently diagnosed with PSC (Primary Sclerosing Cholangitis), which is a chronic liver disease in which the bile ducts inside and outside the liver become inflamed and scarred, and eventually narrowed or blocked. This disease has no known cure and was most likely a contributing factor in the development of my cancer.

CLICK HERE to go to the Go Fund Me page.

CLICK HERE for his Celtic Wiki page.