Christiana Balogun: Bristol forward on making her England debut four years after cancer diagnosis

Christiana Balogun had the date 4 November, 2022 printed on her boots as she ran out for England during their win against Italy in the Women’s Six Nations on her international debut.

It marks the day that Balogun finished her final round of chemotherapy after being diagnosed earlier that year with burkitt lymphoma – an aggressive, fast-growing type of cancer.

“The IV chemo was the biggest thing, it’s what gave me the biggest side-effects and after that finished I was like, ‘OK let’s go, we’re on the home straight now’,” Balogun told BBC Points West.

“It’s a date that I hold very close to me and ‘cancer free’ was underneath that as well.”

The back-row forward had just moved from Wasps to Bristol in May 2022 when she found a lump in her neck.

She was 24 years old, finding her feet after relocating to a new city, in pre-season training ahead of the 2022-23 campaign and undergoing testing to determine what the lump was when three months later she found out it was cancer.

Balogun hadn’t even had played for the Bears for the first time when her career and life were thrown upside down.

“The day I found out my diagnosis I started treatment six days later so there wasn’t a lot of time to process what was happening, what I was going through,” Balogun said.

Doctors told Balogun to pack a bag for a week stay in hospital to begin treatment and she even packed her rugby kit, initially believing she’d be able to continue with training.

“When I think back to it now I’m just like that is the most ridiculous thing to have ever done, you’ve literally found out you have cancer and you think you are going to train on Monday after is absolutely insane,” Balogun said.

“On reflection that is probably a little bit of me not accepting the diagnosis that I had at the time and just thought about the rugby, the rugby, the rugby.”