Nick Toone watched his daughter score for England in the Euro 2022 final at Wembley. England beat Germany 2-1. The next day, he was diagnosed with prostate cancer.
He died in 2024, three days short of his 60th birthday. He was 59.
Now Ella Toone, the Manchester United and England forward, has become an ambassador for Prostate Cancer UK, announced just ahead of Father’s Day. She won the European championships with England in 2022 and again in 2025. “Dad was my absolute hero,” she said. “He was always there at every match; it was him that gave me my love of the game. He is the reason why I am a Lioness.”
She did not soften what the loss has meant. “There isn’t a day that goes by that I don’t think about him and mourn what my family has lost,” Toone said.
The numbers she cited
Toone, 26, pointed to the scale of the disease. Prostate cancer is now the most common cancer in the UK, according to the charity, and it affects one in every eight men. One man dies from it every 45 minutes. “In the next 10 years almost three quarters of a million men will be living with the disease or its impact,” she said. “These men aren’t just numbers, they’re dads just like mine.”
She also backed the charity’s research record. Prostate Cancer UK is the country’s biggest public funder of prostate cancer research, and Toone said its work is aimed at making screening a reality and giving men more treatment options with fewer side effects. “So men like my dad can be diagnosed early enough to be treated and can spend more time with the people they love,” she said.
The charity says too many men are diagnosed late, once the cancer has already spread and become harder to treat.
A second ambassador
Red Roses rugby player Alex Matthews joined as an ambassador in the same announcement, timed for Men’s Health Week. Matthews, a Women’s Rugby World Cup winner, has her own family history with the disease. Her father Dave was first diagnosed more than 10 years ago and got the all clear. The cancer came back in 2023, and this time it cannot be cured. He is still in treatment. Matthews said it “meant everything” when he was well enough to watch her captain the Red Roses last year.
Chiara De Biase, the charity’s fundraising and strategy director, said the pair’s “passion, profile and competitive spirit” would help get across the “vital message” that prostate cancer is the UK’s most common cancer and that “knowing your risk can save your life”.
On Sunday 21 June, at 12pm and 6.30pm, Toone and Matthews will appear on the Piccadilly Lights in London as part of an on-screen Father’s Day tribute to “epic dads” with other charity supporters.
What she said about her father’s illness
Toone has spoken before about how little warning she had. Writing last year for the Players’ Tribune, she said his death “was a big shock, even to some of the people closest to him, because no one hardly knew he was ill.” People ask why he did not tell them, she wrote. “I didn’t know either. I didn’t know half of it… it’s still raw.”
She described him as a man who joked constantly. “Even now, sometimes I think he’s going to come back, like he’s right in the other room waiting for me to come around the corner so he can have a joke or some banter,” she wrote. “He was always on a wind up.”
The charity has an online risk check that takes about 30 seconds, at prostatecanceruk.org/risk-check.
Sources
- Ella Toone MBE and Alex Matthews join as our newest charity ambassadors
- Ella Toone becomes Prostate Cancer UK ambassador after losing ‘hero’ father – AOL
- Ella Toone becomes Prostate Cancer UK ambassador after losing ‘hero’ father
