A FOOTBALL-mad teenager has died after being diagnosed with bone cancer following an innocent bump at home.

Daniel Bentley died on Sunday after spending Christmas and New Year at the East Lancashire Hospice.

The 19-year-old Myerscough College sports studies student only found out he had Ewing’s Sarcoma – a form of bone cancer usually found in young adults – in April last year.

Specialists gave him two years to live, but treatment failed and the cancer quickly spread to his lungs and head.

After a New Year’s Day party at the hospice surrounded by his friends, Daniel lost his fight for life two days later and died peacefully with his family at his bedside.

His mum Jeanette Bentley, 41, paid a moving tribute to her eldest son.

She said: “He was a very keen footballer who loved Rovers and played everyday on his course and then every night too.

“I’m able to look back at the good days we had, but it was very hard to watch him lose his independence, which is what all teenage boys want.

”I’m just grateful we had Christmas and New Year together. He was too kind hearted to leave us before then.”

The former Darwen Vale pupil’s ordeal started a week before Christmas 2008, when he banged his knee on a door at the family’s Marlton Road home.

Doctors said it was a torn muscle, but after he lost two-and-a-half stone in a fortnight he had further blood tests in February.

Another X-ray resulted in Daniel being given crutches and by March his left leg was starting to bend because a tumour was pulling on the tendons at the back of his thigh.

Specialists in Birmingham told the family the ‘suspicious’ tumour was the length of his upper leg and two weeks later Daniel was diagnosed, aged 18, with bone cancer.

On April 7, he was told it was Ewing’s Sarcoma – which spreads attacking soft tissue as well as bone.

At one point doctors suggested a titanium rod or amputation, but the cancer had spread too quickly.

Jeanette said: “Had he not banged his knee we might never have known. He was a fit young footballer, constantly on the go. A typical lad.

“When we got the diagnosis we both cried. I felt like we were walking through a tunnel and not seeing the end.

“He didn’t want to know how long he had left, but I did.”

Despite five months of intense chemotherapy and then radiation treatment, by November doctors were battling just to get him through Christmas.

Jeanette added: “He was in denial until a couple of days before he died. I don’t think he realised how ill he was.

“The staff at the hospice were brilliant and we had a lovely Christmas meal there and a party with all his friends for new year.”