The player who tackled cancer - and now wants to take on the world
He had noticed for a while feelings of tiredness and trailing behind others in training, while his club boss at the time Scott Parker had queried why his running numbers had been so off. "I was actually on Facetime with him when he had the knock on the door," Lockyer recalls of the time Brooks had informed Wales medic Dr Jonathan Houghton of a few symptoms. "I knew he'd not been feeling himself and he'd mentioned it to the doc.
I can remember asking him if he was going to be up to playing, when he had to hang up when the door went. "When he called back, he'd said that he'd been told he needed some more tests because it might be something more serious - as we all now know it was. " And a dark time for someone rarely without a smile, or not at the centre of jokes with team-mates.
"The most important thing was for him to get into a good place health-wise," says Wales team-mate Chris Mepham, a friend as well as a colleague at Bournemouth at the time. "Like everyone else, you try to support him through that and be there for him. Then, when he was in a healthy place, it was about getting back to the level he wants to be.
" Tests while in camp with Wales during 2021 picked up Brooks' cancer symptoms Brooks had been unable to take his dog for a walk on the beach during treatment, let alone cope with any cardio exercise. By the time he returned to training after the all-clear in May 2022, there was 20kg of extra weight to deal with before even thinking about trying to return to top-level fitness. Brooks says he always knew he would be able to return to club football but whether he would have the chance to represent Wales was another thing.
Yet, invited back to camp to watch as Wales qualified against Ukraine in the June, no-one was ruling out making the November World Cup. "I knew it had been a goal and then to not be able to make it there would have been an element of 'what if? ' or 'why me?