Some of Neale Daniher's closest mates have shared beautiful memories of the Australian icon, who died aged 65 on Monday after a 13-year battle with motor neurone disease.
An outpouring of grief from around the AFL has been joined by pride at his fight not only for himself in defying the statistics but for the FightMND cause. More than $100 million has been raised and millions more will be added to the total when the Big Freeze takes place again before the King's Birthday clash between his beloved Melbourne and Collingwood next month.
Daniher's health deteriorated in recent weeks just as the latest beanies rolled out and promotions ramped up towards the occasion.
Brisbane Coach Chris Fagan's Tribute
Brisbane coach Chris Fagan said he will be forever grateful to have caught up with his great friend Daniher early last month at the MCG. Fagan was given his start in the AFL by Daniher at Melbourne and owed his self-belief to him.
"It's been an emotional day today. He gave me my opportunity to get involved in AFL footy," Fagan told Channel 7's The Agenda Setters. "We became great friends and our families became great friends, our kids got together a lot. For me personally coming in from the outside, a bit of a no-name, he just made me feel like I belonged, that I had an important role to play. He helped me enormously with my self-belief ... I just thoroughly enjoyed the 10 years I spent with him at Melbourne. We've remained really close friends from the time I finished at Melbourne and he went to West Coast. We caught up regularly."
At their last meeting Daniher showed he had lost none of his football nous. "I was lucky enough about five or six weeks ago, I went to watch Melbourne play Gold Coast Suns at the MCG because we were playing Melbourne a couple of weeks later," Fagan said. "I look across and there was Neale in his wheelchair, so I was able to go along and have a little chat to him. I'm ever so grateful for that because I didn't realise that would be the last opportunity, but there he was watching his beloved Dees and telling me we might have a bit of trouble with them in a week or two's time — and he was completely correct about that."
Daniher's Demons went on to claim an extraordinary two-point win over the Lions.
Fagan has every Big Freeze beanie lined up in his office at Brisbane's Springfield headquarters, and he found himself staring at them earlier on Monday after the Lions' heavy defeat to GWS over the weekend. "On days when I'm feeling a bit flat and down I just look at those beanies and say 'get yourself going again, take his example, don't feel sorry for yourself, get on with it'," he said. "I had a look at them today after what happened yesterday."
Bill Guest's Final Goodbye
Bill Guest served as FightMND's first chairman and previously sat on the Melbourne board. He was one of Daniher's closest friends to the very end. "I saw him on Thursday afternoon, which was very much a goodbye, sadly," Guest said. "I walked into where Neale sits in their living room, and he had wires up everywhere and it was clearly the last time I was going to see him. Still had his humour, still cracked some jokes. I was with (FightMND co-founder) Pat Cunningham and I knew when we left we'd never see Neale again. It was very sad. Even today when Jenny rang this morning you still shed a tear even though you know it's going to happen and we've known it's going to happen for a long time. But it doesn't change who he was and how you feel about it."
Guest said he will remember Daniher as "selfless, incredibly honest, unbelievably stubborn".
Tim Watson's Missed Opportunity
Former Essendon teammate Tim Watson missed the opportunity to see Daniher one last time but will hold previous conversations close to his heart. "Ironically I went to send him a text message this morning about something completely unrelated," Watson said. "I got sidetracked and I didn't get back to it, and then I got the call to say that he'd passed away. The thing is about not meeting anybody that is extraordinary as he is — and I went from a young player playing at the same time to being a teammate to being a friend — he was a hero to me and I think he's become a hero to so many people. Because of the authenticity about the way that he operated, the way that he went about it, that he put something else ahead of himself and ahead of his health. I did get the opportunity to tell him once what I thought so I'm glad I did that, because often we don't take the time to tell people exactly what we think of people. Moments can pass and it can be too late."
FightMND's Extraordinary Growth
Guest recalled hoping to raise as much an "incredible" $100,000 when he and Daniher, among many others, first launched FightMND. "Look at now. The next Big Freeze will probably raise about $20 million," he smiled. "It's quite extraordinary."
The famous slide down the ice has drawn many of Australian sport's biggest names, and Fagan was convinced to take part in 2018. But it sent him into hospital for surgery. "It gave the slide a few more days' publicity, I reckon," Fagan laughed. "I ripped all the tendons off the bone in my hamstring when I fell down off the steps. I was having surgery two days later — it was lucky we had a bye. Billy Guest was a little bit worried about the insurance side of that, I think. No handrails to hold onto but I never went down that pathway. It was a bit of a famous moment in that event, much to my embarrassment."
Guest joked: "We all did panic a bit there, Fages, I must admit. I'd already watched the vision, we're very clearly going to blame you for that but it turned out you're a gentleman."
How the Big Freeze Began
Watson, a long-time 7NEWS presenter, was the first to interview Daniher after his MND diagnosis in 2013. Before then, a private chat on a walk around the park uncovered Daniher's ideas. "I didn't really understand what MND was all about at that stage and he told me had a couple of what he might like to do. He was naive about how it all might play out—— we're talking about the Big Freeze slide. He had this idea about raising funds. I got back to Melbourne and I went to my boss Lewis Martin and said 'I know you don't know this bloke but he's genuine, he's authentic, he's just been diagnosed with MND, do you think we, the network, can help him in some way?' And that really got the ball rolling, Bill got involved, others got involved then Neale understood what his role was going to be in all this. He was reluctant to step outside of his comfort zone and be a public figure for something like this but because it became the driving force in his life and something he could aim towards he just embraced the whole thing. And as we know now he's just driven it this unbelievable position."
