Sharing the Old Trafford dressing room with Joe Thompson was special and stirring

It was a privilege to share a dressing room with Joe Thompson. Those are words this hopeless five-a-sider never expected to write.

Now it is a crushing wrench to refer to a 36-year-old in the past tense. The news that Joe Thompson has passed away is shattering, especially for his wife, Chantelle, and their two young daughters, Thailula and Athena Rae.

Manchester United goalkeeper Tom Heaton played with Joe on loan at Rochdale in 2010. He described him as a "great human".

Joe was included in our press squad for the end-of-season match against the United media team in May 2023. Our manager, The Sun's United reporter Neil Custis, sought some ex-professional ringers and Joe qualified through his media appearances for MUTV.

United charitably allocated the home dressing room to us 'visitors'. By the tactics board where Ruben Amorim now holds court pre-match and at half-time, Neil scrawled Joe's name on it as the No.10.

Neil then gave a pre-match team talk that highlighted Joe's heroism to overcome cancer twice. That would have been a stirring enough team talk for a squad of competent footballers. Not us. We were beaten 9-4.

Some of us had enjoyed the privilege of (dis)gracing the Old Trafford turf once or twice before. For Joe, it was his first time playing at the 115-year-old stadium.

He came closer than those of us he shared the dressing room with that day. Joe was in the United academy for seven years between the ages of nine and 16. He is named in the official United yearbook in 2002.

A few years ago, a childhood friend of Joe's family shared a junior squad photo taken at Carrington circa 2001. Joe is in it with Richard Eckersley, Febian Brandy, Sam Hewson, James Chester and Tom Cleverley. Rene Meulensteen, Paul