‘Play on’: record Big Freeze crowd honours Daniher
Roger Vaughan |
The fight goes on.
A fortnight after Neale’s Daniher death, he has been honoured at the biggest AFL match this season outside the grand final.
A record Big Freeze crowd, most of them wearing distinctive blues beanies, packed the MCG on Monday for the 12th edition of the fundraiser ahead of the King’s Birthday blockbuster between Collingwood and Melbourne.
Players, coaches and umpires formed a circle in the middle of the MCG before the game, as a video tribute was played for Daniher. Then the crowd broke out in applause.
The crowd of 88,019 is a record for a Big Freeze game – this year was the 12th – and the FightMND charity said 100,000 digital beanies had been sold, raising $2.5 million.
The former AFL player and coach became an inspiration, turning his devastating motor neurone disease 13 years ago into a movement against what he called The Beast.
And in a fitting response on an emotional day surrounding former Melbourne coach Daniher, the Demons beat the Magpies in a thriller, by eight points.
Big Freeze has become the centrepiece of the FightMND charity that Daniher co-founded.
He was named 2025 Australian of the Year and fittingly, Governor-General Sam Mostyn led this year’s Big Freeze sliders into an ice bath.
Mostyn, a former AFL commissioner, is the highest-ranking official to take the slide.
The impact of Daniher and the FightMND campaign means that the King’s Birthday game is the biggest AFL game this year outside the grand final – a status traditionally reserved for the MCG Anzac Day blockbuster.
Pre-game, the two teams ran through a giant banner featuring a mural of Daniher that read “Play On For Neale”.
The Killers’ Mr Brightside, one of Daniher’s favourite songs, blared out as the players warmed up for the game.
Most of the crowd wore the blue beanies made famous by the Big Freeze event.
For her slide, Mostyn wore a half-Essendon, half-Melbourne guernsey – Daniher played for the Bombers and coached the Demons.
“Who inspires us most today? Neale Daniher. So I could only come as one person – he’s with me today, I reckon,” Mostyn said.
“Neale said play on, so I’m going to slide on.”
Other sliders included Winter Olympics gold medallist Cooper Woods dressed as surfing great Mick Fanning – he punched a toy shark in the ice pool – and Australian netballer Jo Weston as Kylie Minogue.
“The last two weeks have been incredibly hard, but to see the community around the MCG, seeing it blue … it just means that we continue to do what we need to do,” Daniher’s daughter Bec said.
“Beat this beast – we’re going to do it for Dad. He loved this day.”
Bec said their family continued to be overwhelmed by the public support for the FightMND cause.
“Everyone’s doing Dad proud, it’s so special,” she said.
Members of Daniher’s family, Mostyn and Melbourne coach Steven King also took part in a pre-game march to the MCG.
A Big Freeze beanie sat on an empty chair near the top of the slide. As his conditioned worsened, Daniher took pride of place in his chair.
“He loved it. He was always the coach, so he always loved being the boss and that’s the boss chair up there,” Bec said.
“We’re going to play on for Neale.”
South Sydney player Jai Arrow, who announced his NRL retirement due to an MND diagnosis five days before Daniher died , was in the Collingwood rooms before the game and tossed the coin for the choice of ends.
Another slider was former AFL star Dale Thomas, dressed as Mick Malthouse, his coach for Collingwood’s 2010 premiership.
Before Thomas’ slide, Magpies fans roared their approval as their 2010 captain Nick Maxwell walked out in his playing gear, with the premiership medallion around his neck.
He and Maxwell then held up the premiership cup before Thomas’ icy slide.
AAP