Dylan Tombides has been awarded a new two-year contract by West Ham United.
The 19-year-old Australian striker has barely kicked a ball in the last year having spent much of that period fighting testicular cancer, but returned to action in mid-March for the first time in six months when he appeared as a second half substitute in a 3-1 win against a Queens Park Rangers XI.With his contract up this summer Tombides admitted that he worried about his professional future, but those fears were dispelled when he was recently informed that his contract was being extended by a further two years.
"I'm very pleased to have signed a new contract. The club have stood by me over the last two years while I've been fighting testicular cancer, even though the new management have only seen me play not many minutes of football," he told whufc.com.
"From the first minute I was diagnosed they were right behind me. They said right from the start that anything I needed was mine, so there were no issues in that concern.
"Every time I came in when I wasn't training, the other players would all rush over to see how I was - not just the young lads, but all the way up to the first team staff. That was a really fantastic feeling, I never felt left out."
Tombides has thus far made just one first team appearance, that coming as a late replecement for Gary O'Neil in the 4-1 League Cup home defeat to Wigan last September.
He moved from Perth, Western Australia to England in order to join West Ham at the age of 15 and signed a full-time scholarship a year later. Within a year of signing his first contract, Tombides was diagnosed with testicular cancer (summer 2011) and immediately began treatment, which inluded chemotherapy.
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