BY ANDREW FOSTER
When people ask me what Emilia’s Big Day is, I tell them it’s a lot of things.
It’s a celebration of a remarkable seven-year-old girl who has shown incredible courage.
It’s a charity takeover of what was already set to be one of the Betfred Championship season’s highlights – London Broncos versus Bradford Bulls.
But more than anything, it’s about something that defines rugby league: when someone’s in need, this community comes together.
Everyone knows about Rob Burrow, about how he and his family inspired the rugby league community and how in turn the rugby league community rallied around him.
That spirit has been there since 1895, woven into the DNA of our game and Emilia’s Big Day is another example of that spirit in action.
Emilia is a very special little girl, but without her anonymous stem cell donor, she couldn’t have recovered from aplastic anaemia, a life-threatening blood condition.
It took a stranger’s generosity to give her the chance of life she has today. Our son Rycroft needed a stem cell transplant around the same time, which is how we came to know Emilia and her family. Through those experiences, we learned firsthand why stem cell donors are so vital – and why there’s currently such a desperate shortage.
The statistics are stark: every 14 minutes, someone in the UK is diagnosed with blood cancer. And Emilia and Rycroft both act as examples of other medical conditions where a stem cell transplant is the only hope.
When people understand more about the stem cell donation process, they’re far more likely to volunteer. That’s a huge part of what Emilia’s Big Day is really about – education, awareness, and hope.
We know with absolute certainty that there will be other children like Emilia and Rycroft in the future who will need donors. If we don’t act now, some of those children won’t find their match. They’ll die when they could have been saved.
Not a day passes where I don’t think about Rycroft and wish things could have been different for him. That energy has to go somewhere, and since we lost him, aged just 16 months in June 2023, we’ve been putting that energy into doing what we can in his memory, to ensure other parents get to watch their children grow up.
This is why we need you at the Cherry Red Records Stadium on Saturday 6 September. Gates open at 2pm, the game kicks off at 4pm and we’ve made it as accessible as possible – kids under 12 get in absolutely free, under-18s pay just £5, and adults £20.
Crucially, 25% of all ticket sales go directly to DKMS, the charity making this possible.
But this isn’t just about fundraising. We’ll have the DKMS team there to explain stem cell donation, help people register as potential donors, and show that it’s nowhere near as scary as some people imagine.
There’ll be interactive games, face painting, food trucks, and family fun alongside the rugby league action we all love.
When Emilia walks out as guest of honour before the game, introduced to both sets of players, treated like the VIP that she is, she’ll represent something powerful: hope.
Hope for families facing daunting diagnoses. Hope that strangers will step forward when needed most. Hope that our rugby league community continues to prove that we look after our own – and that sometimes, “our own” includes people we’ve never met but who desperately need our help.
Book now at dkms.org.uk/broncos
Come for the rugby, come for the atmosphere, come for the food, come for the music… come for something bigger.
Because in rugby league, we’ve always understood that the most important victories happen off the pitch.
Photo: Dave Wood