ENGLAND World Cup hero George Cohen won his battle with cancer — he only wishes his old skipper Bobby Moore had been so lucky.
Both 1966 stars suffered from bowel cancer but while Cohen has survived for more than 30 years, Moore died from the disease aged just 51.
Writing in his new autobiography, Cohen said: "I made it out into the light. Bobby Moore didn't.
"I was lucky with my doctors — perhaps Mooro wasn't.
"It is something that comes into my mind quite often.
"A year before he died I saw him at the National Gallery where the Boys of '66 assembled for the unveiling of a portrait of Bobby Charlton.
"Mooro looked ghastly. I asked him how he was feeling and he said: ‘Not good, George.'
"He said that he was receiving treatment but it wasn't having that much effect.
"It looked to me that he was pretty much worn down and, by the sound of the medical report, he had been left with not much more than the love of Stephanie — and his own great dignity. Bobby Moore was dying and when I left the gallery I wondered why I had made it and the likelihood was that he wouldn't.
"It occurred to me that it doesn't really matter who you are.
"If something wants to strike you, it will, and there is not a whole lot you can do about it except fight it the best way you can.
"Bobby died very quickly. It was just like turning off a tap.
"He knew he had so much left in his life, something that couldn't be measured by wealth and celebrity."
Cohen remembers vividly the night he was first struck down with the pain which was later diagnosed as cancer. He said: "The cancer started in 1974 when I was 36. I was taking my usual five-mile run between the Kent villages of Bidborough and Penshurst.
"It was a run I could normally eat but on this day I didn't feel right. I felt bloody tired and it was a tiredness I didn't recognise."
Cohen goes on to recount in graphic detail his appointments with doctors and nurses and how he eventually needed a colostomy.
And he can still remember the terrible pain he went through. He recalled: "How do you describe pain with any degree of precision? It is not so easy.
"The best I can do is say it is like somebody constantly boiling water on a certain part of your body.
"I kept thinking this can't be happening to me — I'm George Cohen, England footballer, athlete, indestructible.
"At the time I couldn't tell anyone — not even my wife. That was my first irrational reaction.
"After an operation on my bowel cleared the cancer the first time around, I also had to deal with the possibility that the cancer could come back at any time. I pushed it to the back of my mind, I tried to get on with the business of making a living but I had to do everything in the short term.
"I lived by the day, putting a new value on that, and I didn't make deals that might stretch out for more than six months."
Cohen seemed to have won his battle but four years later the cancer attacked his pelvis. He added: "When it moved into my pelvis I did have one great stroke of luck — and one that was denied to Bobby. It did not reach my liver. Once that happens you have basically run out of options. I know I was lucky."
Cohen needed extensive radiotherapy treatment at the Royal Marsden Hospital and required regular shots of morphine to control the pain until he was given the all-clear in 1990.
He said: "Sixteen years is a hell of a long time to be on a drug, especially when you get high points with the shots of morphine that came at 10am and 10pm each morning and evening.
"It was tough getting off the drugs. They answered all the immediate problems and gave me this warm, fear-reducing glow.
"It took a little time for the morphine to kick-in but then I would get this almost unbelievable sense of well-being.
"It's a bit like coming out of the freezing cold and stepping into a warm bath.
"In my case I needed those drugs to survive and afterwards there was no doubt I had big problems.
"When I came off the morphine I became very fidgety and I found myself blinking a lot.
"There was no way I would have taken anything I didn't need but the problem was that my need was so great.
"I definitely didn't become a junkie but the illness dragged on for so long that I was probably on the way."
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