Footy can be a matter of life and death when the Memorial Bears play so when the Bears won the KIC Cup in Woollongong last month there was plenty to celebrate.
Subscribe now for unlimited access.
$0/
(min cost $0)
or signup to continue reading
Claiming the Cup was a great moment for the group of mates who joined together from various league clubs in the Hunter and beyond.
It also meant greater chance for publicity for their chief reason for being - raising awareness of bowel cancer and remembering Mitch Day who lost his life to the cancer aged just 32.
The Bears are coached by Mitch's older brother Josh and his twin Luke is a player.
"We had a lot of new players this tournament but the bond was just as special. To get up and win was just unbelievable. No one expected it, but we stuck together and did it," Josh said.
Just as special though was joining with their teammates in spreading the word about getting tested for bowel cancer.
They said one of the most confronting things they learned about bowel cancer was while it was on the way to be Australia's No.1 cancer killer, if detected early it is one of the most curable types of cancer.
"We were shocked and wanted to know why there was this gap between the death rate and successful treatment," Josh said
"It seems there is a bit of a stigma about it and hopefully having rugby league players out there talking about it and posting messages about it it will help lose that.
"It affects younger and older people. Testing kits are sent out to people when they reach 50 but it affects younger as well as older people
"One of our end goals is being able to go to workplaces and talk about it, quickly hand out testing kits getting everyone to get tested and pass the kits onto specialists.
Any type of blood in your stool, recent unaccounted for back pain and any pain in your lower abdominal area are some of the symptoms which can be associated with bowel cancer.
"Before his diagnosis, he didn't know what bowel cancer was and neither did any of us. We had no idea what the signs and symptoms were," he said
"We do now and want to let others know as well through playing rugby league and getting blokes talking."
PREVIOUS: Mitch Day Memorial Bears stars of day