Tony Mowbray has detailed an emotional conversation with Sunderland assistant head coach Mike Dodds following his bowel cancer diagnosis.
After his sacking by Sunderland last season, Mowbray was in charge of Birmingham City and welcomed his former club to the Midlands for a clash in the Championship. The Blues won the game 2-1 which prompted the Black Cats’ board to sack Michael Beale just months after he had replaced Mowbray at the Academy of Light.
Just days later, however, Mowbray revealed the shocking news that he would have to temporarily stand down from his role at Birmingham City due to health issues, which were later detailed to be bowel cancer. Speaking to the BBC, Mowbray explained that he is now on the mend and detailed an emotional conversation with Sunderland staff member Dodds after the game between Birmingham and Sunderland at St Andrews last February.
“Gosh, I remember getting emotional telling Doddsy,” Mowbray said. “He was asking how are you, gaffer all right everything is good and I said, oh no, mate, it’s not good and he said, what do you mean, it’s not good? I said, oh I’ve just been diagnosed with bowel cancer and I’m going to have to leave but he got quite emotional as well, to be honest.
“I was going into the unknown. I genuinely thought I was big and strong and I was going to get through this no problem; I’ll get through an operation with no issues, and yet the moments those days when I was picking myself off the floor, the days when I was emancipated, I’d been I’ve been to the toilet 40 times in an hour and um and you’ve got no fluid left in your body, and your body’s crinkling away your voice, you could hardly talk because your throat was so choked up because there’s no fluid.
“It’s horrific really and that’s what I can say and yet your family gets you through; it’s the people who care and love you know who get you through it my wife, at a drop of a hat, would drop everything and just drive me two and a half hours to Manchester because I needed to get there, and the doctors were there and the nurses were ready and everything was there for me but yeah, it was tough.
“Birmingham have been amazing to me very supportive, the owner is an amazing human being; the chief executive, Gary Cook, has been fantastic Craig Gardner, the sporting director, was unbelievable with me, and I felt as if we were had a chance to be all right and yet they did always say that things were going to change at the club and they were going spend some money and yet probably the plan wasn’t that they were going to get relegated.
“It’s easy for me to say no; I don’t think we would have gotten relegated. We just won the last two games against Sunderland and against Blackburn Rovers, and we were on; we were pushing pretty well, I think, but listen, it is what it is and Birmingham have now done what they’re doing; you know, they’re going to move into a 60,000-seat stadium in three or four years time and hopefully they’ll be pushing to be in the Premier League if not in the Premier League by then the owners talking.”
