Rucci's article today not on line so cut and paste from pressdisplay.com
#PH408
Footy unites to support Choco in greatest fight
DEAN Bailey was the ultimate good bloke. Cancer took him before the start of the AFL premiership season at 47, less than half the age he deserved to reach with such a positive and enthusiastic approach to life.
Mark Williams is the ultimate example of healthy living. He has never smoked. He does not drink alcohol. He took on sporting pursuits to emphasise the theme Mens Sana In Corpore Sano (a healthy mind in a healthy body).
Now Williams, like Bailey - his assistant coach at Port Adelaide in the 2004 premiership campaign - is fighting cancer. And he will fight ... as is the Williams way and stood out in his father Fos as he battled low blood pressure.
Everyone — everyone — knows someone who has been affected by cancer. And everyone becomes affected, as was so obvious across the AFL this year when Bailey died just five months after being diagnosed with lung cancer. As actor Pierce Brosnan, who lost his wife Cassandra to ovarian cancer in 1991, noted in September: “To watch someone you love have his or her life eaten away bit by bit by this insidious disease, that kind of sorrow becomes an indelible part of your psyche.”
It is still difficult for those who knew Bailey well to stand on the Adelaide Football Club’s training ground at Max Basheer Reserve at West Lakes and deal with just the memories. Exactly a year ago, just before Bailey’s bad cough became a reason to consult a doctor, the Crows strategist was eagerly putting into place plans to advance Adelaide’s coaching and development program. He was ready to put the Crows on the cutting edge of improving goalkicking accuracy, advancing the mental strength of senior players who are often ignored in development programs and guiding his coaching colleagues on lessons learned from other sports.
And Bailey was so keen to test some theories on how the Crows could develop an onfield tactical advantage on their new deck at Adelaide Oval.
None of these plans will be lost on Adelaide coach Phil Walsh, who worked with Bailey at Port Adelaide and delivered a moving and memorable eulogy at Bailey’s memorial service. The vision will unfold through Walsh with a strong reflection on all Bailey imagined was possible at West Lakes. nly a month ago Mark Williams returned to Adelaide — he is currently at the Richmond Football Club as a development coach — to lead the private celebrations among the Power players on the 10th anniversary of their ground-breaking AFL premiership.
He was full of energy, vision and ambition ... to the point Port Adelaide veteran Kane Cornes questioned why
OWilliams was not coaching an AFL club nor considered a major contender for the vacancies at Gold Coast and the Western Bulldogs.
It is the long-standing question within a longer-running puzzle: Why has Williams not coached again after the burnout at Port Adelaide created a messy exit from Alberton in 2010? Why didn’t Williams become Kevin Sheedy’s successor at Greater Western Sydney?
Why did St Kilda turn away from Williams in favour of the untried Alan Richardson last year?
Why was Williams not a frontrunner for a senior coaching job this year?
And now it is all insignificant to the more meaningful question of how does cancer — that insidious parasite, to borrow from Brosnan’s words — strike Williams when he has lived such a sound and healthy life? Why did it take Bailey?
Bailey had so much more to give Australian football — and the young men in whom he had such a strong belief at the Adelaide Football Club.
Williams also has so much more to offer the AFL, particularly as a man who never stops thinking of how to make the game better. And safer, as highlighted by his game-