Jermain Defoe’s farewell to Bradley Lowery is Twitter’s most popular sport tweet of 2017

Jermain Defoe's moving farewell message to Bradley Lowery is the most popular sports tweet of 2017 in the UK, Twitter has confirmed.

Six-year-old Bradley passed away in July after battling neuroblastoma, a rare form of cancer. A supporter of Sunderland, the close friendship he struck up with Defoe captured the hearts of millions. Defoe's tweet included a lengthy, heartfelt message to Bradley and several pictures of the pair together. https://twitter.com/IAmJermainDefoe/status/883729325408874496 Twitter released details of its top 10 Sports Tweets of 2017 - ranked in accordance with how many retweets they had received from UK users - on Tuesday morning. The rest of the top 10 is as follows: 2) Andy Johnson's pledge in response to the news of Aaron Lennon's mental health issues https://twitter.com/AndyJohnson08/status/859714803618779136 3) Peter Crouch poking fun at his own expense while meeting a couple of giraffes  https://twitter.com/petercrouch/status/876846713163718656 4) Wayne Rooney reflecting on his goalscoring return to Manchester with Everton https://twitter.com/WayneRooney/status/899753106602426368 5) Anthony Joshua (with help from Shaggy) defends himself against accusations from Amir Khan https://twitter.com/anthonyfjoshua/status/893480501675249664 6) Conor McGregor confirms he will fight Floyd Mayweather  https://twitter.com/TheNotoriousMMA/status/875101558584856578 7) Former Liverpool midfielder Xabi Alonso confirms he will retire at the end of the 2016/17 season https://twitter.com/XabiAlonso/status/839777479426510848 8) This... https://twitter.com/wroetoshaw/status/863435141762428928 9) Gary Lineker's response to the news Claudio Ranieri had been sacked as Leicester boss https://twitter.com/GaryLineker/status/834857880226508801 10) Everton's Yannick Bolasie, the night Arsenal lost 3-0 to his former club, Crystal Palace https://twitter.com/YannickBolasie/status/851533103688540160