Australian Marrow Match Awareness Game
On Saturday 1st of May 2021 Australian Marrow Match was involved in the AMM Awareness Game. This was a football match in Tasmania, Australia between two local clubs and aimed to raise awareness about the need for more people to join the registry, particularly young men, to become a potential stem cell donor.
The whole AMM team headed down to Tassie to watch the inaugural match between Lauderdale and North Hobart Football Clubs. There was a lot of tension before the match as these two clubs have a fierce rivalry. However, Mark Reid (our first AMM ambassador) braved the footy change rooms pre match to give the boys speech. Earlier in the week Mark had visited both clubs during their training session to do a talk and presentation about his personal story with cancer and a stem cell transplant (which you can read all about here) and to inform them why there is a desperate need for more young men to join the Australian registry. Currently only 5% of the registry is made up by young men aged 18-35 and they are the prime candidate for donation as they literally have more stem cells to give.
The Match was a huge success, between Mark’s amazing presentations and the whole AMM team handing out information and interesting facts during the breaks we had achieved our goal of raising awareness. Just before the game Mark presented each of the teams runners with a AMM top as well as wishing both teams luck for the match (although he secretly was going for Lauderdale, as they are his local club). We had lots of people interested in registering to become potential bone marrow donors. Which you can do here.
While we were in Tasmania we were filming a bit for our documentary series, one of which is about Mark and his incredible story. We have a short video of the match which you can watch, but keep an eye out for Mark’s story in our film series!
We just wanted to say a huge thank you to the Tasmanian State League, Lauderdale Footy Club, North Hobart Footy Club and Mark and his family. All of this would not have been possible without them and all the support they have given us!
