After tragic news about a pal from golf, Matt Cleary and his mates gathered at the club and did their best to make sense of it, and to honour their friend as best they could. They had a little help from a legend of the west.
Jockey William Pike is known, of course, in the Australian way, as “Pikey”, but also as “The Wizard” for his ability to extract maximum performance from any given steed at any given track.
And while the great-great-grandson of Jim Pike - who won 27 of 30 races aboard mighty Phar Lap, including two WS Cox Plates and the 1930 Melbourne Cup – is based in Perth, W.Pike is a long established punters' favourite, even cult hero, among eastern staters for his propensity to win races in the western timezone, that being following the last in Randwick, Flemington, Doomben, et al.
Mugs everywhere will tell you, hand on heart: Pikey's a special in the Get Out of Jail Stakes. They even have a saying for it: “Back Pike, drink what you like.”
One of those punters was, more often than not, my mate from golf, Anthony “Digs” Dignan. Most Saturday afternoons in the members bar at Long Reef GC, Digs would rustle whatever cash money had been won-and-lost by his four-ball, take it to the TAB machine and invest it upon whatever animal Pike was riding next up in the west.
“C’mon, Pikey, get him home," Digs would urge, sometimes followed by raucous affirmation of punting expertise. At other times (most times, if we're honest) there was chagrin and piss-takery - closely followed by a scan of the form to see what Pike was on next.
It was man-boy stuff. We bonded over it. It was just harmless, dumb fun.
And now he’s gone and we’re all a bit shocked and shook. So quick was his passing that some of us barely knew he was crook, much less how crook.
Middle of March he’d come back from a conference in Miami and, in a very Digs way, played golf the Saturday he landed. He blamed jetlag for his minus-six in the five-club par comp. But, afterwards, when he couldn’t keep a beer down, he took off home. Digs must be genuinely ill, it was agreed.
Subsequent diagnoses of stomach cancer weren't great. But these days, right? Chemo, radiation, stem cell what-have-you? You can fight it. But Digs didn't get a chance. This one was virulent. It spread from bowel to bones to brain. He lost feeling in his fingers. And on Friday we got the terrible news. And it shook our crew, as you can imagine it would.
Digger was all of us, in a way. He was a kid from the ‘70s and ‘80s for whom recreation meant cricket or footy, with golf like an adjunct, muck-a-round sport. BMX riding was just how you got around. And you had to pedal to propel yourself.
If you had 20 cents you’d play Galaga at the Milk Bar. A phone was a rotary dial-up stuck to the wall in your kitchen. You didn’t really need it anyway; you already knew where your mates would be after school.
And after scoffing a Vegemite sandwich made from thin-sliced white Tip-Top, and with liquid Milo dribbling down your chin, you’d pedal quick as you could to the park for a hit or a kick.
And you would do that every single day.
For Digs, it begat a life in sport, the life of an Australian sportsman, a man of sport.
He was good enough to play for Sydney Swans U/19s. He won two premierships with Manly Wolves. He kicked a goal after the siren to win a reserve grade premiership for North Shore Bombers.
He played first grade cricket for Manly and North Sydney in Sydney's super-strong grade competition. He faced Glenn McGrath, Mike Whitney, Doug Bollinger. He kept wickets behind Adam Gilchrist and to Stuart MacGill. He ran between wickets with Michael Bevan. He played as a pro for Finchley in Middlesex, helped them win the '91 Bertie Joel Cup.
For a decade he was a PE Teacher at St Augustine's College in Brookvale. Manly Sea Eagles would tap him for talent. Norths' cricketers still talk of the time Digs borrowed the private school's mini-bus to take his team for a special Thursday night cricket practice at the Canterbury night races.
He was employed by the AFL to manage competitions in NSW. He was general manager of the ACTAFL and western Sydney's East Coast Eagles. He managed our golf club at Long Reef, and clubs at Portsea, North Ryde and Wyong.
I knew some of this stuff, as golf mates do, though not all. That’s what we were to each other: mates from golf. We didn’t ring each other. I don't know what he did outside golf. I didn't know his wife's name or his kids' ages. I don't know what he liked to watch on Netflix or if he owned a dog. It was the same for he about me. We weren’t close like that. We were golf-close. Golf mates. It was cool. It was enough.
I did know his handicap. I did know he was a fan of Richmond Tigers. You couldn't not know. You didn’t have to know Jimmy Jess from Jessica Alba to know that Digs was crazy-bit for the Tiges. He'd been to 20 grand finals at the MCG. Three times he saw the Tiges win flags.
I know he called spades bloody shovels. He could be strident of opinion and we didn’t always agree. But we were never not mates because of it.
Our mateship, as it was for most of us at the club, was what it was – comfortable, fun. We’d bond over four-putts and hooks OB on 17, and whatever else cost you a jug in the way of these things. Again - it was enough.
One day we’ll think of some Cup or Digger Day or something to honour the man as we do another mate, Bobby Nicholls, whom the bastard dancer also claimed too soon. Too early to work out yet. We'll do something.
When we got the news on Friday, it was like, what do you do? Our answer was what we've always done: go down the club, drink a beer, shake your head, do your best. We did it again on Saturday. Shook hands, shook heads, clinked glasses.
And we backed Pikey in the west.
His first ride, Fat Roy Slim, ran second. Another one, the short-priced Pond Master, also ran second. The $5.50 shot, meanwhile, Snippy Jean, may still be running, headless, hopeless, somewhere out in the back paddocks of Belmont.
But then, in race five, our long table of knowledge, and outwards through the club and internet chat group, were exultant when Pikey piloted Too Darn Stormy, a two-year-old bay gelding in its first ever race, to victory in the Unite Resourcing Plate over 1200m.
It had been too darn stormy to play golf. And we knew as one that our man Digs would’ve been all over the $2.50 favourite, and greatly enjoyed this man-fun writ large.
And we raised glasses again; sad for our mate and his people. For he was a good bloke, our Digs, and we'll miss him.
Vale, mate.
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