Morgan Coxhead: Goalkeeper with cystic fibrosis aiming to become professional footballer
- Published
Morgan Coxhead played for Truro City in a pre-season game against League One side Exeter City last summer
"It can make life very challenging at times," Morgan Coxhead says of the cystic fibrosis he has had all of his life.
Having grown up as a football-mad youngster, goalkeeper Coxhead was good enough to be selected for Plymouth Argyle's youth team until he was 18 before spending time with non-league side Truro City.
All the time he was playing while fighting the genetic lung disease which makes life so difficult for those with the condition.
"It's the build-up of mucus in the lungs and airway," he explains to BBC Radio Cornwall's Balls and All podcast.
"It makes it a lot harder for me to breathe and I have to have a lot of medication, physio and go to hospital."
Despite that constant difficulty, Coxhead is still hoping to make it in the professional game.
He has just signed with 10th tier Western League side Falmouth Town as he aims to make a living from the game he has loved since he grew up in the shadows of Portsmouth's Fratton Park, before moving to Cornwall as a seven-year-old.
"I want to work up through the leagues, that's the way I'm going to go about it now," he explains.
"But still I want to get to that professional level, as high as I possibly can, wherever that will be."
Coxhead hopes to emulate Australian rugby union player Nathan Charles who won four caps for the Wallabies and played for the likes of Bath and Wasps while managing cystic fibrosis.
But Charles is the only person with the condition to play a contact sport at a senior professional level - so the challenge for Coxhead is clear.
"I have to do double the work everyone else does just to keep up with them," he says.
"If I want to push forward I have to do even more, so it's a lot of work, but I definitely manage it with the discipline and the motivation of where I want to get to.
"If I just do one session it might take me longer to do that session and I might be struggling to breathe. So, for me to get past that, I'll have to do a couple of sessions and just keep working and working just so I can get through that stage of not feeling down."
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