Alex Young Faces Stage Four Cancer Battle and $50,000 Treatment Bill

Alex Young spent a lifetime stopping trouble at the back. Now the former All White and Tauranga City AFC stalwart is facing a fight no defender can simply head clear.

The 77-year-old has been diagnosed with stage four cancer and is staring at a $50,000 bill for treatment not funded by the public health system. Friends, teammates and admirers are scrambling to close that gap.

Young first knew something was wrong when he noticed a growth on his left groin and went to his doctor. Tests at hospital brought the news no one wants to hear. He was told he had what he calls an “internal melanoma”, and by the time it was found, the disease had already spread.

“It was a strange one, but I've consequently got stage four cancer on my liver, on my lung, and on my chest,” he said.

He spent six months on the immunotherapy drug Keytruda. Then the treatment stopped working. The next option was ipilimumab – a powerful drug, but in his case not funded by Pharmac.

“I had my first procedure with that, which costs money, obviously. I think the first one was $10,400.”

Ipilimumab is publicly funded for some cancers in New Zealand. Not for the one attacking Young. That leaves him paying out of pocket for four rounds of treatment at Tauranga’s Canopy Cancer Care, his second session due on Wednesday.

For a man who built his life around football, it is a jarring kind of scoreboard.

Football has been the constant thread. Young left Scotland as a teenager, arriving in New Zealand at around 16 and climbing through the grades. He made his name with Hamilton City, lining up alongside notable figures such as Keith Nelson and quickly establishing himself as a towering presence at the back.

“Soccer is my sport and life, I suppose,” he said.

At around 6 foot 4, he was built for the role. His form against visiting English sides, including Bournemouth and Luton Town, pushed him into national contention. In 1977 he was named in the All Whites squad, a proud moment for the immigrant defender who had carved out a reputation as a rugged, reliable stopper.

Tauranga would become his football home. Young moved into a player-coach role, driving Tauranga to an unbeaten season and cementing his status as a club great.

Tauranga City AFC life member Mark Bougen, who served on the club committee with Young in the 1970s and shared the pitch with him, said the diagnosis hit hard.

He remembers a defender you did not want to run into.

“You would call him a no-fuss football defender, a hard Scottish man,” Bougen said. “When he played, he took no prisoners.”

Now, the community that watched him marshal backlines is trying to shield him from a different kind of pressure.

A Givealittle page has been set up with a target of $50,000, a figure organisers describe as what’s needed “to give Alex the best possible chance” against the disease. The page notes that the cost of unfunded treatment is “too much for one person or family to carry alone, especially while navigating the physical and emotional toll of a cancer diagnosis”.

Young admitted he was initially reluctant to let his name front a fundraising drive. Pride and privacy run deep in defenders of his era. But the determination of his friends changed his mind.

“When they came around to see me, they were so good and they had so many good ideas. I thought, well, if they're willing to go to this trouble, I'll try it.”

At the time of writing, donations sat at about $2000 – a start, but still a long way from the final whistle on that $50,000 target.

Every contribution, though, has landed heavily with him.

“I'd like to thank them from the bottom of my heart. They're probably strangers. Thank you to them all.”

For decades, Alex Young stood between attackers and the goal. Now the question is whether the football community he served can stand between him and a bill that no one should have to face alone.