It was a warm December afternoon in 1984 and I was at my parents' home on holidays from the seminary where I had just completed my first year of training to become a priest. I could hear this incessant bouncing of a football up and down our back path — surely this was cricket season and far too hot for football.
But the big raw-boned 18-year-old from Ireland who stayed for his first year in Australia with my parents had no interest in cricket. He was utterly determined to learn this new game with the awkwardly shaped oval ball. That determination and toughness characterised the 'man of steel', Jim Stynes, who against the odds not only learned how to play AFL but eventually took its ultimate individual honour, the 1991 Brownlow Medal, in 1991.
He was so determined that he joined me in swimming the 1985 Pier to Pub at Lorne, even though he did not know how to swim — he completed the 1200m open water swim doing a kind of dog paddle. It took him 20 minutes longer than anyone else, and no doubt he alarmed more than a few of the lifesavers, but he completed it!
Over the years the evidence mounted that Stynes was a man of steel — a record number of consecutive games in the AFL, defying all injury and pain; taking on the chairmanship of a broken AFL club and restoring its spirit and its finances; and finally the heroic way that he took on the cancer that was to rapidly overtake him. This battle made him a hero and source of inspiration for thousands, maybe millions.
But Stynes was not only a man of steel, he was also a man of flesh and blood. So moved was he by the plight of young people drifting, lost and without direction that he started the Reach Foundation to support young people and help them to realise their dreams and potential.
He loved his family deeply and in spite of a very busy life was always fully present to them and their needs. And for their part they were always there for him, showering him with the love and blessings he needed to sustain himself in the good times