FOOTBALL legend and former Ipswich Town manager Bobby Robson has revealed that he has beaten cancer for a third time.The 73-year-old was diagnosed with lung cancer following a skiing accident when an X-ray revealed a golf-ball-sized tumour.

FOOTBALL legend and former Ipswich Town manager Bobby Robson has revealed that he has beaten cancer for a third time.

The 73-year-old was diagnosed with lung cancer following a skiing accident when an X-ray revealed a golf-ball-sized tumour.

It was successfully removed in an operation last month, without the need for any further treatment.

Sir Bobby said: “Someone up there must like me - I'm the luckiest man alive.

“If I hadn't fallen over I wouldn't have known about the tumour and you don't know what might have happened from there.”

Sir Bobby fell during a visit to the Austrian ski resort of St Anton and it was during an X-ray to see whether he had broken his ribs that doctors spotted a dark patch on his lungs.

He said: “The operation to remove it has been 100 per cent successful. I've had a thorough scan from top to bottom and I'm as clean as a whistle.”

Sir Bobby's first brush with the disease came in 1992, when he beat colon cancer. In his autobiography he revealed how he secretly underwent surgery while coaching at Dutch club PSV Eindhoven without any of his friends knowing.

Just three years later, he was diagnosed with a rare form of mouth cancer by Ipswich Hospital surgeon Huw Davies and underwent complex surgery at a London hospital.

At the time Sir Bobby was heading Portuguese champions Porto but he was told that if he did not have an operation to remove the malignant melanoma on his face immediately he would not see the season out.

Sir Bobby, who managed Ipswich Town throughout the 70s, now credits Mr Davies as the man who saved his life and has been back to Ipswich Hospital on several occasions to help with fundraising for the oncology department.

In 2002 the hospital launched the Bobby Robson Jubilee Appeal which raised £55,000 to buy new equipment for Mr Davies.

The money was used to purchase a special double-headed microscope which is used during reconstructive oral surgery - similar to the kind Sir Bobby underwent.

Have you been helped by the equipment Sir Bobby has fundraised for? Write to Your Letters, Evening Star, 30 Lower Brook Street, Ipswich, IP4 1AN or send us an e-mail to eveningstarletters@eveningstar.co.uk