SPORTING heroes have given the shirts off their backs to help leukaemia sufferers.

Alan Shearer's Blackburn Rovers training kit and shirts donated by Rovers' centre half Colin Hendry and cricketer Mike Atherton will be auctioned at the Hare and Hounds pub in Blackburn tomorrow.

Ex-Superbike racing champion Carl Fogarty has donated a signed baseball cap and shirt and an autographed Preston North End shirt will also be up for grabs.

Half the money raised will go to the Nick Mallinson Appeal Fund. Nick, of Ontario Close, Blackburn, died in 1995 aged 37 after a failed bone marrow transplant. He was a regular at the Hare and Hounds. The rest of the cash will go to the parents of four-year-old Edenfield girl Amy Read, who is awaiting a bone marrow transplant.

They will split the money between the ward at Pendlebury Children's Hospital, Manchester, where Amy is being treated, and the Anthony Nolan Bone Marrow Trust.

Amy's mum and dad, Wendy and Mark, and Nick Mallinson's widow Kerri will be at the auction, which starts at 8pm.

The charities will receive a further boost on May 31 with a sponsored bike ride from Blackburn to Blackpool. The first riders will set off from the pub at about 8am.

Anyone wanting to donate to the appeals should contact Hare and Hounds landlord George Marsden on 01254 52920.

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