Danny Graham puts his PFA Team of the Year award up for raffle with aim to raise more than £10,000 for NHS during coronavirus pandemic
Blackburn striker Danny Graham is now raffling off his PFA Team of the Year trophy in a bid to raise £10,000 for the NHS heroes battling the coronavirus pandemic at the Queen Elizabeth Hospital in Gateshead.
The 34-year-old has been raffling sports memorabilia from his career on his Instagram page, which has included signed Blackburn and Watford shirts, as well as a pair of his match-worn boots.
Blackburn teammate Bradley Dack also sent a signed shirt, which raised over £1000, taking the total funds raised through Graham’s raffles to more than £8800.
Graham, who owns his own clothing company Fugati, is also producing a special concept kit for the NHS and will donate that, alongside the proceeds raised via his JustGiving page, to the hospital, which was where the striker was born
But the former Sunderland and Watford striker isn’t stopping there and now wants to break the £10,000 mark by raffling one of the biggest individual trophies he’s received in his career.
Speaking exclusively to talkSPORT, Graham said: “I’m actually [raffling off] my [PFA] Team of the Year award for League One for Blackburn Rovers when we got promoted. It’s in a nice case and there’s a medal inside of it. That’s the big one.
“I want to thank everyone who’s been involved so far and put their hand in their pockets.
"It’s for a great cause and hopefully they’ve enjoyed the raffles and the stuff that’s been going on. If we can get over that £10,000 mark, I think it would top everything off.
“It [the trophy] means a lot to me. Getting in the Team of the Year is massive because it’s your peers who vote for that team. To get in that and get promoted in the first season after getting relegated was massive.
“A lot of family members have tried to talk me out of it, but someone’s going to get that prize and not many fans can say they’ve got a Team of the Year medal sitting in their house. It was tough, but there’s a bigger cause here and the bigger cause is helping the NHS; so hopefully that will help.
“If we can get to that £10,000 mark and be able to go up there, hopefully when this has all blown over, and hand over the cheque, would be an amazing feeling, especially to do it through sports memorabilia.”
Graham was named in the PFA Team of the Year for League One in 2018, alongside three other Blackburn players, after scoring 17 goals in all competitions to help Rovers return to the Championship at the first time of asking, following relegation the previous campaign.
“[I’ve got] great memories, [of that season],” he says.
“We started that season by getting beaten in our first two games and we sat bottom of the league, but I think that was the perfect wake-up call we needed.
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“We knew it wasn’t going to be easy after that. We had to be on it 100 per cent every game and we were and we went one defeat in 32 towards the right end of the season, which helped us massively. It was a great achievement from everyone at the club to bounce back at the first attempt.”
One of Graham’s old teammates, Troy Deeney, also got involved in helping to raise awareness of the Blackburn striker’s charitable raffles.
Deeney joined Watford in August 2010 from Walsall but struggled to get into the Hornets’ starting XI that campaign, partly due to the form of Graham and Marvin Sordell up front.
Graham finished as the Championship’s top scorer that campaign, subsequently earning a move to the Premier League with Swansea, which resulted in Deeney being given an increased role in the Hornets’ first team.
Since then, Deeney has turned into Watford’s talisman and his transformation both on and off the pitch has impressed Graham.
“I’ve been massively impressed,” Graham finished.
“I don’t think anyone would have probably thought he would have been there for more than four or five seasons. That’s normally the case with footballers, as they tend to move on quite often.
“To be there for ten years and to score the amount of goals he has done, considering he’s had ups and downs off the field, I think is a massive credit to himself. He’s sat there with over 100 goals; it’s no mean feat.
“He’s a Watford legend and rightly so, and I can only praise him for what he’s done on the field for Watford Football Club.
“If you’re playing against the bigger teams and you find yourself penned in a little, to be able to hit the ball up to Troy and his ability to hold defenders off and bring others into play allows Watford to get up the pitch. That’s a massive help.
“It’s funny you know because I saw a picture not long ago when Troy first signed and he’s nowhere near the size he is today. Again, all that is down to his hard work to build himself up and to know himself as a footballer and his strengths and weaknesses and he’s worked on them.
“Fair play to him, and hopefully that can continue for a few more years to come.”
To partake in Graham’s final raffle for the Queen Elizabeth Hospital, visit his page