JOE meets the Bayern Munich fan with a club-branded glass eye

"There's two things I don't mind talking about," Ryan Gibson says. "Ocular melanoma and Bayern Munich."

The Bayern superfan lost his eye to the rare form of cancer, which affects roughly five in every million people, but has found a very striking way to raise awareness of the condition: a glass eye adorned with the Bundesliga champions' badge. When we catch up with the 33-year-old over Skype, he sheds some light on the club's response to his unusual request, and explains how he hopes to help other potential sufferers catch the cancer early on. Ryan hails from Charlotte, North Carolina - one of the larger Bayern Munich-supporting hubs in the United States due to its large German population - and he heads up a supporters group called the Queen City Bavarians. Through that position he has been in contact with the club for fundraisers, no one at Bayern HQ was prepared for someone asking about a hand-painted, club-branded glass eye.

"I had it in my head throughout the surgery and the recovery time that 'hey, I've never really done it the way everybody else has done it', so the whole time in the back of my mind it was 'I'm getting a Bayern Munich eye'," Ryan explains. "I started enquiring about the logo to use for my eye and [Bayern's] US office said they'd never had a request like that so they didn't really know what to do."

His Bayern hero is Paul Breitner ("he did it his way and his way worked pretty darn good, but he was controversial when he did it"), and one of his regrets is not having the eye in time for the former Germany international's visit to Charlotte, but he is pleased with how it has become a conversation starter to help him make more people familiar with ocular melanoma. https://twitter.com/FCBayernUS/status/733063062287044609 Dozens of people have asked Ryan about the prosthetic since he first revealed it last week, and he recognises that it allows him to almost become a mascot for ocular melanoma. The stop-start nature of doctor's appointments and regular checkups have interfered with his day job, heading up a sports marketing company, but he always has time to answer people's questions when it comes to his eye.

"The first thing they ask is like 'what is that?' and I explain to them the Bayern Munich logo, the team and stuff like that. They'll say 'oh, is that the team playing in Charlotte in the summer?' and I'll be like 'yes' and they'll be like 'we might have to check them out'. "Then instantly the next question is 'what happened' and that opens up the awareness, telling them about ocular melanoma, and I'll always throw in the thing at the end about 'make sure you get a dilated pupil exam every year'.

Few people are aware of ocular melanoma, Ryan explains, and even fewer know the best way to go about testing for the cancer. Indeed, he only received a diagnosis after going in for tests when a tumour had wrapped itself around his optic nerve and led to a detached retina, and he knows others won't necessarily find themselves in the same position. Added to this, the extreme rarity of the cancer means funding is limited, and those who (like him) have no medical insurance will be forced to "wheel and deal" to afford the necessary treatment. Ryan regularly watches Bayern games at the Courtyard Hooligans sports bar in Charlotte, where fellow fans just talk to him about Bayern and don't really treat him any differently to how they would any other rival supporter - it's a different approach from his niece, though, who he says "thinks I've got a cartoon eye". He's at Hooligans for pretty much every Bayern game, but that will change in June when he gets to see the club in person for the first time in his life as they travel to his hometown for a pre-season friendly against Internazionale. But he's got one other game on his list, and it's not too far from home. He's keen to see Rangers play in nearby Charleston over the summer, for one man in particular - Gers midfielder Dean Shiels. https://twitter.com/HammerheadMrktg/status/736974817258274816 Incredibly, Ryan isn't the only football fan in the world with a club-branded glass eye. Newcastle United fan Andrew Canavan was the first, and indeed it was by referencing his British counterpart that Ryan was able to get Bayern behind his plan in the first place. But now that he's got his new eye and is helping spread the word about ocular melanoma, Ryan is in a confident mood.