Happily jiggling baby son Nico on his knee, Brad Jones looks the typical proud dad.
When he tickles his 11-week-old tot under the chin, provoking broad, chubby-cheeked smiles, the football star’s happiness is clear for all to see.
But for Liverpool’s goalkeeper there’s an extra poignancy to his time with Nico... who was born five months after the death of Brad’s older son Luca.
For him and partner Dani Lawrence, the new arrival has brought much-needed joy after the toughest two years of their lives.
Brad says: “We have been through so much and it has been so hard but seeing Nico smile helps us carry on. Losing a child is almost unbearable, it’s something no parent should ever have to go through.
"It’s a loss like no other. We all loved Luca so much. But having a newborn baby to look after has given us a focus, something positive in our lives again.
"No one will ever replace Luca but having Nico is a blessing. It means we can share happy times again.”
Luca, Brad’s son from a previous relationship, was six when he died of a rare form of leukaemia in November.
The football-mad youngster had endured 18 gruelling months of treatment, including a blood stem-cell transplant.
In a cruel twist he did not live long enough to see the little brother he had been so excited to meet.
Brad, 30, and Dani, 25, want Nico to grow up knowing all about the brave little boy and have given him the middle name Luca.
Fighting back tears, Aussie international player Brad, who joined his first British club Middlesbrough in 1998 and signed for Liverpool for £2.3million in 2010, says: “Luca is always with us, he’ll always be a part of our family and Nico will know he had a big brother who was looking forward to getting to know him.
“I still have some of his favourite toys – the figures he loved playing with – and his pictures are all around the house for everyone to see.
“Before Dani was pregnant we talked to Luca about the possibility of having a sibling and he loved the thought of it. So when it happened only two months later we couldn’t wait to tell him.
“Because he was so ill we told him as soon as we knew, when Dani was just six weeks’ pregnant. It was early days but we didn’t have the luxury of time to spare. I went in to see him and said, ‘Dani’s got a secret’ and he knew straight away.
“Dani then whispered that she was pregnant and there were lots of kisses and cuddles. He couldn’t wait to be a big brother. A week later he went, ‘where’s the baby?’ because he thought that was the way it worked. He told all the nurses he was going to be a big brother and even came up with names.”
Dani, a model and physiotherapist, says: “Luca even drew some great pictures of his family for the baby so I’m going to put them in frames to show Nico when he’s old enough.”
Brad was first told that his son, who loved watching his daddy play football, was seriously ill in June 2010. Luca’s mum Julie had taken him to doctors in Marseille, France, where they lived, because he was struggling to get over the flu. A blood test showed he had leukaemia and he needed to start a course of chemotherapy the next day. Brad, who was training for the World Cup with the Australian football team in Johannesburg, left the tournament straight away and flew to his son’s side.
He says: “It’s one of those phone calls you just can’t imagine happening. When you hear the word cancer it’s terrifying. I went numb. Suddenly nothing else – the World Cup, football – mattered.
“My life changed in a day. I just had to be with my son, to hug him and see him for myself. When I got to the hospital he was laughing as normal.”
Luca looked healthy but doctors told his devastated family he was suffering from acute myeloid leukaemia. “They told us then that it wasn’t good,” says Brad. “We knew early on the chances of getting better were slim but there was some hope, there were things that could be done.”
For 18 months Luca underwent a series of treatments, often being kept in semi-isolation to avoid infection. Brad and Dani spent as much time as possible with him.
“All my focus was on Luca,” says Brad. “Yes,life had to go on but it was hard to think about anything else. I even thought about stopping football. I almost shut down.”
In September 2010 Luca had a blood stem-cell transplant. Dani and Brad now campaign for the Anthony Nolan charity to highlight the need for donations of bone marrow, which is essential in transplants, as well as urging more people to give blood. Dani says: “Around 50 per cent of people who need a transplant never find a match so to have found one was a success.”
Sadly their optimism was short-lived. After six months they found out the transplant had failed and Luca was too ill to have another. Doctors warned his family there was little more they could do.
“It was awful,” says Brad. “The medicines were so unpleasant. He’d be begging us to stop. It broke our hearts seeing him so sad. We never cried in front of him, but sometimes it was overwhelming. I’d go out and break down. I couldn’t stand seeing him in pain.”
In November Brad got a call asking him to go to France because Luca did not have long left. He tried to get a flight that night but it was impossible.
“A few hours later I got the call to say he’d gone,” says Brad. “He’d passed away in his mum’s arms. I was devastated he’d gone and I hadn’t said goodbye.”
Now he says Luca is with him every day and he wants to make him proud through his football. But he and Dani are focused on their new baby too. And since Nico’s birth on April 4 he has made his parents smile again.
Brad adds: “When I look at Nico I realise we’ve a lot to be thankful for. It’s tough, we’ve been through a lot and we are grieving but there are reasons to be happy too.”
- For more information about bone-marrow donation see www.anthonynolan.org
