Figures present 12,000 folks nationally have misplaced their lives ready for an organ transplant up to now decade.

With the necessity for a transplant extra urgent, it was McDonald’s brother, Fraser, who stepped ahead to donate a kidney after discovering he was a super match.

“I bear in mind pondering: ‘let’s do that, I want to guard my youthful brother’,” Fraser tells BBC Sport.

The McDonald brothers had been raised within the Scottish coastal city of Carnoustie, famed for its golf course, the place Fraser, a firefighter, nonetheless lives together with his spouse and kids.

“Rising up, Kev and I had been shut,” he says. “Each of us had been mad for soccer, there was a great little bit of preventing [between us] however I would say it was an in depth relationship.”

McDonald laughs when he remembers the childhood fights together with his sibling.

“I would attempt to tease him in entrance of his mates and he would batter me.

“I used to be actually tall and thin and, when it got here to soccer, extra technical. He was the alternative, operating across the pitch, tackling and smashing folks.”

McDonald’s kidney transplant came about at Man’s Hospital, London, and was something however easy.

Regardless of his brother being a super match, McDonald suffered a major rejection and spent eight hours a day on a drip.

He was finally discharged after 18 days however his worries weren’t over.

McDonald was quickly launched by Fulham, whereas spouse Lucy was closely pregnant with their first little one, Layla.