School friends of Ollie Armstrong have described him as full of life, honest, reliable, talented and “a template for all friends”.

It is clear Ollie, 21, had many good friends from Trinity School who cared about him deeply and thought very highly of him.

Kieran Brown, 21, of Buchanan Road, Harraby, Carlisle, said: “I’ll remember him as the guy who was always honest, always reliable, always nice to everyone. He never had a bad opinion about someone.

“He was a template for all friends.”

Cameron Johnston, 21, of Buchanan Road, Upperby, Carlisle, said: “He was one of the friendliest persons you could ever meet. He was friendly, full of life, just naturally talented – anything he put his hand to he was naturally good at.”

Many friends spoke about Ollie’s great sporting ability and how he could quickly pick up anything, be it rugby, football, swimming, snooker, board games or video games.

Andrew Campbell, 22, of Houghton, said: “I’d always be thinking there’s nothing he can’t do.”

Kieran added: “He was one of those people that are annoyingly good at everything. He could pick up a new sport and be annoyingly good at it really quickly.”

Rugby coach Phil Healy, club treasurer at Carlisle RFC and who coached Ollie, described him as a talented rugby player and natural sportsman.

“He loved his rugby,” said Phil. “He played scrum-half for us, which is one of the key positions. In that year group of that team, he was the first choice.”

Ollie’s friends admired how he bravely battled against cancer without complaint and spoke of their shock at his death last Friday.

Despite suffering from Ewing sarcoma, Cameron said Ollie tried to live as normal a life as possible.

He said: “In terms of where we thought he was, we had no idea it would come to this.

“He was so positive about going back to uni this year. He said I can go to uni and do hospital at the same time. We were all cautious for him and said, ‘Can you handle it? You’ve got a lot to do’. But he pushed on with it. He didn’t want it to hold him back.”

Cameron, talking about Ollie’s death, added: “I think at our age, it’s something we’re not prepared to deal with or ready to deal with.”

Kieran said: “It shows how determined he was because he was still going to chemotherapy when he went to uni. He just seemed so determined and so strong.”

Last year Kieran, Cameron, Humza Ghafoor, Paul Herring and Ollie went to London for a few days and watched an England football match. The Willow Foundation, a charity which enables seriously-ill young adults to have fun days out, helped fund the trip.

Kieran said: “It shows how he just wanted to go around London – we could tell how much it was getting to him all the walking about. We had to make him stop for breaks because he just wanted to get on with it.

“For three days it just felt like everything was normal. I think it was nice for him to get away.”

Andrew, who met Ollie at Trinity School and went to Lancaster University with him, said Ollie was “super friendly” and threw himself into university life.

He said of Ollie’s fight with cancer: “I never heard him twine about it at all. You know if you have a bad day at work, you’re more than willing to broadcast it? He just really kept himself to himself in that respect.

“It’s a hard pill to swallow and it’s hard to express, but I don’t think he wanted anyone to worry too much about him, which speaks volumes about his character.”

When asked about Ollie, Andrew said: “He wouldn’t be making the most noise but he’d always be there for good craic and you could talk to him about literally anything.

“He just used to have a good laugh all the time.”