No doubt tributes to Neale Daniher will be flooding media outlets this week and so they should.

The club has asked me to write a few words regarding Neale and his impact at The Tigers in 1991 that will live forever in the memories of those who were there.

I think the two people mostly responsible for dragging Neale out of retirement were our Coach Leon Harris and his Assistant Bernie Sheehy who had coached with Sheedy at Essendon.

Neale’s knees were shot but he self-managed enough to play most games, kicking six goals to put the club into it’s first VFA Grand Final.

A young Dandenong side full of soon-to be AFL players overran the Tigers unfortunately, but much of the professionalism from 1991 cemented the standards in order to win our first premiership two years later.

Things didn’t start all that well that season. We always went to Point Lonsdale YMCA camp for our pre-season camp and for this particular year we were allowed to go to the Queenscliff Hotel for our ‘Red Faces’ performances and dinner.

There were some local boys there with what appeared to be their girlfriends.

When the disco started, a number of our exuberant U/19 players fresh off their first premiership started dancing with the girls.

A fight broke out and I vividly remember standing at the bar waiting to buy a beer, when a bar stool hit me in the back! I looked across the public bar to the lounge bar where Neale and Damian Drum were and Neale looked like Malcolm in A Clockwork Orange!

The fight broke out into something you’d see in a western movie. Even the DJ hurdled the deck and joined in! Welcome to Werribee Neale!

It was the last time we were allowed outside the confines of Point Lonsdale.

I didn’t know Neale all that well, just a fan like everyone else. Weirdly I can remember a kick he passed to me during a drill one night. It was a decision making drill that required him to kick around the corner to me over 40m avoiding two opponents wanting to spoil me.

What started as an absolute ‘Mung’ landed laces out in front of my nose.

Neale’s humility is legendary. When I moved to WA in 1995, Neale was appointed Assistant Coach at The Dockers. I rang to see if he wanted to catch up for a coffee.

We caught up in South Terrace and frankly I was star struck but Neale always had the capacity to make you feel at ease. I was struck by how much he spoke lovingly about his time at The Tigers.

When Neale was diagnosed thirteen years ago and returned to Melbourne, Leon Harris and Bernie Sheehy organised lunches every year at Bernie’s pub in North Melbourne.

Anyone from 1991 was invited and they were always a hoot. Two of those ex-players Michael (Mixer) McMaster and Darrel (Fenno) Fenton were incredibly close to Neale.

Both were invited by Neale to Melbourne FC when Neale was appointed coach there in 1998. Mixer did the running and Fenno was a ‘board’ man in the box.

Mixer and Fenno have since raised thousands for FightMND and continue to do so.

Their stories of Neale tearing the paint off the walls of the MCG changerooms are directly opposite to the Neale the public see. ‘The Reverand’ showed no mercy as a coach and drove the same standards that made him captain of Essendon at the age of twenty.

The regulars at the lunch were a star studded crew from Werribee’s early 90’s. Stephen Sells, Terry Domburg, Anthony Eames, Frank Lesiputty, Phil O’Keefe, Nick Wash, Greg Chapman, Richard Geary, Greg Buck, Chris Vasilou, Fenno, Mixer, Leon and Bernie.

Neale’s dry sense of humour was always a standout. One lunch, Leon mentioned that he came runner up in the VFL Best First Year Player in the 70’s, an award that Neale had won.

When Leon finally stopped heaping the praises on himself, there was a lovely comedic pause and Neale said, “Yeah, there was a big gap between first and second.”

The salutes for Neale’s life will come thick and fast. His time at Werribee was tiny in comparison to his footy career but his memories of the club were very affectionate.

His impact on the community is on a massive scale but for us who had the privilege of spending some quiet time with him, our memories will always be of a man who was a great listener, funny, kind and authentic.

Our thoughts are with the Daniher family.