OVER coffee he gave it to them straight, no sweetener. "I've got something to tell you blokes. I've got cancer of the bowel."

Dr Declan O'Brien was nothing if not methodical. A year on, he is gone. And at Hereford's King Street surgery - a practice he was part of for 20 years - the sense of loss is palpable.

It is made more so by his belief that he would be back.

If optimism was not enough when up against a particularly aggressive condition, those close to Dr O'Brien knew how hard he fought over 13 'terrible' months to maintain it.

There were repeated bouts of chemotherapy and radiotherapy endured to earn a little more time with the family he cherished.

At King Street, going about practice the 'normal way' is the best tribute they can pay, given the nature of the man mourned.

Then comes the search for someone to take his place.

And that, says senior partner Dr Adrian Eyre, is going to be hard.

'Dec' joined the practice as a GP registrar from Hereford County Hospital. He was, said Dr Eyre "everything we were looking for" over a wide field of choice.

It was in the difference made to the everyday that Dr O'Brien fulfilled the faith fellow partners put in him 'many times over'. A difference staff and patients alike can share specific memories of, a difference that found a practical application through the 10 years he helped run Herefordshire's GP Education Scheme preparing young doctors for general practice.

There was no time for shock when Dr O'Brien broke the news of his cancer last June.

Operated on shortly afterwards, he was never well enough to return to work and died at his Aylestone Hill home on August 25, aged 48.

His funeral on Monday filled Belmont Abbey, testament to the professional and personal circles his friendship encompassed.

Hereford United, for instance, knew him as both a fan and club physician.

Company secretary and director Joan Fennessy remembers the reliability he brought to the role.

"If he said he was on the way you knew he would be there," she said.

At ease among players and supporters alike, he watched matches from a seat in the directors' box as an 'ever present' over two seasons.

Illness meant he missed the last campaign. But they told him United were top of table just before he died.

A minute's silence in Dr O'Brien's memory will be held before the next home Nationwide Conference game against Scarborough on Saturday, September 13.

Dr O'Brien leaves a wife Jude, two daughters - Kate is studying medicine and Mary is a student at St Mary's RC High, Lugwardine - and a son, Patrick, who is attending Bristol University.

Dec's help was vital

DR Declan O'Brien would have had just days left to live when James Powell graduated in microbiology with first class honours. James was taking a year out from working toward a medical degree - an achievement Dr O'Brien will have helped make possible.

It was Dr O'Brien that treated James through the severe glandular fever that struck when he sat his A-Levels as a student of Hereford Cathedral School.

The treatment saw James sufficiently well enough to gain the grades that got him into King's College, London, says mum Sue.

James was a teenager when he set his mind on medicine. Meningitis claiming the life of his second cousin proved pivotal to that decision.

James himself had contracted meningitis as a toddler. Work done by the paediatric team at Hereford County Hospital helped him recover.