I played last week in the Mark Hughes Foundation golf day at Crown Plaza in the vineyards.
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It was its fifth year – I’ve played at all five – and in this year’s four man ambrose my foursome had twelve under par off the stick.
A fairly handy effort I thought upon the signing of the card and subsequent refreshments at the nineteenth, but we didn’t come even close to winning anything - a competition of burglars and thieves it turns out; my ball in the straight drive competition was literally resting on the rope, but I was somehow beaten … How? Did I need to land, and balance, the ball on the rope?
As tempting as it is to write about this injustice, that is not the story here.
The story is about the Mark Hughes foundation and our sporting community and how, so often, there is so much more to sport than just sport.
After the round, at the presentation lunch, where, as I mentioned earlier I didn’t win anything (but was presented with a cap commemorating my five year attendance…) Mark joined us at our table for lunch.
I’ve known Mark since his days at the Knights and so was comfortable enough to ask a few questions about his experience through his illness.
I asked him, ‘how did you know something was wrong?’
His simple answer was, ‘I had a headache for two weeks.’
Where I would have stupidly just increased my Panadol intake, Hughes went for tests.
He was diagnosed with brain cancer, but his prompt action meant that the diagnosis was still early enough for him to do something about it.
Hughes cancer experience revealed to him the need for funding for research into all aspects of the illness and he decided that he was in a position to do something about it.
Hence the formation of the Mark Hughes Foundation.
Since its formation the foundation has raised ten million dollars dedicated to brain cancer research.
Ten million dollars! The ‘Beanie for Cancer’ initiative has raised three million so far this year.
Mark spoke of a function for the foundation in Glenn Innes at an eight dollar per person Chinese banquet where one of the attendees left a cheque for a hundred grand.
Prominent supporters of the foundation have included the likes of Andrew Johns, Paul Harrigan and Steve Waugh.
Carrie Bickmore, who lost her husband to brain cancer, has gotten seriously behind the Beanies.
The NRL had a Beanie round. I am continually struck by the goodness of our sporting fraternity.
True, we have some ratbags, and they’re the ones who tend to make the front pages, but it’s people like Mark Hughes, and the people who support him, who are more indicative, to me, of what we’re really about.
I’ve just received a phone call which changes the anticipated end to this column.
Playing fullback for NSW Country in the annual City-Country match at the Sydney cricket ground in 1967 was a tall spindly Maitland player.
Early in the first half he was thrown the ball three times on the fourth tackle (four tackle rules in those days) and from the middle of the cricket pitch he potted three field goals.
The opposing fullback, and ‘immortal’, Graham Langlands, could do nothing but watch them sail over his head. On the strength of this performance the tall Maitlander was subsequently selected to play for NSW.
The player was Gary ‘Bimbo’ Collins, recently judged to be one of Maitland’s all-time top twenty players.
I, along with many others, will tell you that Bimbo Collins was, as well as being a tremendous fullback, the best kicker of the football (and we’re talking of the era when the ball of the game was more often than not a water-logged leather Steeden…) in my time in the game
I played with Bimbo for many years. As I write this I’ve just been informed that he passed this morning.
Vale Gary Collins.
