Okehampton footballers and fans gathered by the clubhouse last week (August 27) to commemorate well-loved former Argyle player Tom Williams, who tragically passed away in March this year.

In memory of Tom, friends, family and fans organised a memorial event which included a wide of range of activities and a friendly football match to raise money for the charity Epilepsy Research UK as Tom himself suffered from the condition.

Hayley Wilkins, Tom’s ex-partner, said: “Today was about kind of getting everybody together to make more memories to share those of Tom and obviously the memorial match is the pivotable event as Tom played for Argyle.

“The focus of today was to to keep kind of Tom’s memory alive, but also to create awareness of epilepsy.

“It’s likely that the statistics are underrepresented.”

SUDEP (sudden unexpected death in epilepsy) was determined to be Tom’s cause of death and Tom’s friends and family hope that the money they raise will help fund research into epilepsy and its treatment.

Hayley added: “Thank you to all the businesses and charities and individuals that have donated for the auction and the raffle. There’s been some amazing prizes and people have been really generous in giving. 

“Twenty-one people die a week of epilepsy-related deaths. It’s really, really difficult to detect and Epilepsy Research is trying to get to a place where everyone with epilepsy is seizure free. 

“Epilepsy Research is still so early on in trying to determine what makes a seizure kind of fatal.”

Family and friends hope that the Tom’s memorial event will become an annual fixture in the Okehampton Argyle calendar.

At the time of writing the total amount raised from the memorial event had not yet been calculated.

Epilepsy is a neurological condition characterised by repeated seizures as a result of sudden bursts of abnormal electrical activity in the brain.

It is not yet known exactly what causes epilepsy but damage to the brain can result in repeated seizures.