Members of the Leeds United first team were on hand at Leeds Children’s Hospital recently, making their annual festive trip to visit as many children and families currently receiving care as possible.

The players, including captain Ethan Ampadu, Joe Rodon, Sam Byram, Karl Darlow, Alex Cairns, Lukas Nmecha, Gabriel Gudmundsson, Jaka Bijol, Noah Okafor, Dominic Calvert-Lewin, Jack Harrison, James Justin, Ilia Gruev, Seb Bornauw and Brenden Aaronson, all headed to the city-centre based hospital after training last week to visit a number of busy wards.

During the visit, which is always an incredibly special occasion to both the club and hospital every year, the players spent lots of time handing out Leeds United presents, having photos and signing autographs, as well as chatting to all of the young patients and their loved ones, helping to lift the spirits of those who are having to spend time over the festive period in hospital. Our Leeds United first teamers also handed out gifts to the nurses and staff working on the wards to show their appreciation for all of the amazing work they do, day in and day out.

After the visit, Whites’ forward Okafor said: “We know Christmas is coming soon so we went to see some kids. They are going through a difficult time and it’s not easy to stay in the hospital, so we wanted to give them some positivity and put some smiles on their faces. It’s a small gift, but I think we did make the kids happy.”

Aaronson added: “I have a lot of respect for the medical realm and people that are in this space. You know, when they ask for photos and stuff like that, I always feel like we want to go out of our way to do that for them because of what they do, they're superheroes too and they deserve a lot of credit for what they do – it's really special.”

“It's really important for us, but it's also not easy to see these kinds of things,” commented Gruev. “I think it values more also in terms of your personality and that you know some people have some other problems and some really, really tough problems, real problems. It's good for us to see these things and also to help the kids and to give them a Christmas present.”

Leeds United has a long-standing and incredibly important relationship with Leeds Children’s Hospital, which is one of the country's leading children’s hospitals. As always, it was a special experience for all involved in the visit, to help spread some much-needed festive joy during what can be an extremely difficult time over Christmas for these young people and their families.

Sarah Fletcher, the hospital’s matron, said: “Families have been having really tough times here and when we told them this morning about the visit, there was some real excitement and actually the players have been brilliant.

“I think at this time of year when there's all so much going on at schools and in homes and the children that are in hospital miss out on some of that, it's really important we celebrate with them and having this is something that they'll remember for a long while.

“Today there's been some really lovely times with some of the players, and we had a really great visit.”

Throughout the month of December, all of our first team players have been involved in different festive visits, giving support and love back to the community that offers so much to them every weekend.