ALLAN Aokuso was a talented teenage sportsman with high hopes of a professional football career.

He was not long out of school and preparing to try out for the Canberra Raiders when the unthinkable happened - he was diagnosed with bowel cancer, a disease that typically hits in old age.

That was in 2006. The Australia Post mail sorter from Logan didn''t live long enough to showcase his talents to the National Rugby League side.

"They opened him up and . . . removed a tumour the size of a small apple," his younger sister, Hazel, 19, recalls. "He was shocked and confused. He had always been very healthy. He ate good food. He had never smoked and there''s no history of cancer in our family."

In January - about 18 months after his initial diagnosis and despite months of aggressive chemotherapy - Allan''s cancer returned.

He died on March 14, four months shy of his 21st birthday.

Peter Gourlas, Allan''s surgeon, said: "Certainly, the hardest thing I''ve ever had to do is tell the parents of someone so young that they''re not going to make it.

"Those cases always stand out in your mind. The tumour had spread throughout his entire abdomen. I remember he was very athletic looking. Trying to tell the family what I''d found . . . was obviously extremely difficult, especially when they said: ''Can he play football again?''."

At Allan''s funeral, hundreds of people wore green ribbons - the former Runcorn High School student''s favourite colour. It gave his family and friends an idea for a tribute to Allan - to start the Green Ribbon Campaign to raise awareness about bowel cancer.

His friend Jessica Seage acknowledges the idea is a "large and maybe crazy" one.

But it''s one she wants to see through. "Although this has been a very sad time for the many that were close to Allan, we see this as an opportunity to do something about Australia''s awareness of this terrible form of cancer," Ms Seage said.

In 2003, Australian doctors diagnosed about 12,500 cases of colorectal cancer - which includes bowel and rectal cancers. Almost 4400 Australians died of the cancer in that year.

Colorectal Foundation chairman Graham Newstead, a colorectal surgeon, said cases of bowel cancer in patients as young as Allan, who had seven siblings aged from five to 24, were extremely rare. "I have in my own practice of over 35 years, only had two patients in their 20s," he said. "Most of them are in their 60s, 70s and 80s."

Professor Newstead said Australians aged 50 and over should be screened for bowel cancer every five years - preferably via a colonoscopy - a procedure in which a gastroenterologist uses a flexible scope to view the inner lining of a person''s bowel.

Those with a family history of the disease should start having four-yearly colonoscopies - which can detect precancerous polyps - at age 40.

Once a polyp is found and removed, screening should occur every three years. "This is a disease which can be prevented," Professor Newstead said.