A CAMPAIGN to help a former Saints and AFC Totton footballer suffering with excruciatingly painful cluster headaches has raised in excess of £50,000.

In his early teens striker Nathan Jack had high hopes of a professional career when he was talent-spotted at a Saints satellite centre in Slough.

But all that changed when he was diagnosed with a brain tumour at the age of 15.

Jack underwent a major operation and, with football strictly off-limits, was forced to cut his ties with Saints.

He eventually started playing again, starring for non-League Bracknell Town before becoming part of Stuart Ritchie’s highly successful AFC Totton side of the late Noughties.

But ever since his teenage days Jack has suffered from a neurological condition which, over the last three years, has gone from bad to worse.

Now living in Newcastle with his wife-to-be Natalie, Jack is plagued by agonising cluster headaches, causing severe pain on one side of the head. It means he can no longer work or drive and he struggles to leave the house.

Describing his agony, Jack said: “It feels like a red-hot poker trying to push my eye out.

“My eyes start streaming, I start kicking and screaming, and sometimes I even black out.”

There is no cure for cluster headaches, but Jack’s close friend and former AFC Totton teammate Ryan Hill has stepped in to promote awareness of the condition and to raise funds to make the 29-year-old’s life more bearable.

Hill, who works in Winchester and lives in the New Forest, explained: “Nathan and I played football together for years. He’s one of my closest friends.

“There’s a whole group of us boys involved. There’s Jamie Whisken, Ryan Moss and James Coutts who were all at Totton, and Marvin Brooks from Poole Town. (Liverpool and England’s ex-Saint) Adam Lallana is also in our circle of friends.

“We can’t just sit back and watch Nathan suffering such pain.

“When these cluster headaches come on, he’s incapacitated and he can have up to six or seven episodes a day.

“Each brutal attack can last between 15 minutes and three hours.”

Nathan and Natalie are due to get married in Northumberland in April, but the wedding plans have had to be put on hold.

“He can’t get married because of the attacks he’s having. Also, he’s not working, so his fiancée is supporting him financially,” Hill explained.

“We’ve talked about doing a fund-raising match for him through AFC Totton at some stage but, for the moment, most of it’s going through the platform of a Justgiving page we’ve set up online.

“Nathan desperately needs a private operation which will cost £35-40,000. The waiting time on the NHS is six months.

“We raised £45,000 in just five days, but we need to raise more because he’s got a wedding to pay for and he needs help with medical bills.

“The operation won’t cure the cluster headaches, but it will allow him to control the attacks.

“We need to help change Nathan’s life.

“This is no way for a young man, who has everything going for him, to live his life.”

*To make a donation please go to: https://www.justgiving.com/ crowdfunding/nathjacksfight-4life