PENRITH Panthers president Phil Gould had nothing but praise and admiration for Bolo, and said he had no hesitation in stopping in when asked by Pat Broderick if he would be available.
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“Pat and I played together back at the Panthers many years ago – we started together,” Phil told the Guardian. “And I knew there were a lot of rugby league people coming along to support Bob.
“As far as the Panthers are concerned, Bob was a captain/coach of our club back in 1968 – it was a year after we entered the rugby league competition.
“We recently held some events to celebrate our 50 years in the competition and a lot of the blokes who were in that original side spoke glowingly of Bob and his contribution to the club and the game.
“He’s certainly got legendary status at the Panthers … even though he started as a tiger, we consider him a Panther.”
Phil said it was great to see so many people attend the event.
“There’s faces here I haven’t seen for a long time, it’s an older crowd cause Bolo is from a different era,” he said. “It’s probably the era just before I started … but a lot of these old blokes I played against when they were at the back-end of their careers.
“I was a very young player in the 70s, so I know the faces and I remember the names.
“We’re all looking a little bit older and worse for wear, we’re all moving very slowly, but haha, it’s wonderful to catch up and have a few beers together.
“That’s the lovely thing about the rugby league family is that they support their own and support each other and whilst you don’t get to see each other as often as you’d like when you do it’s always fun.”
He also said it’s important to remember that showing you care goes a long way.
“Some people as they get older and they might have some unfortunate times and sometimes they can think that no-one really knows or cares about them,” he said.
“It’s really about the caring. We have fundraisers to help ex players financially and get them back on their feet and help them with services or needs that they have, but more importantly than that, I think it’s just the fact someone cares and you get to see people you used to see a long time ago and that friendship always remains.
“When you play football with someone, or even against someone, there’s always that special bond from your past. It’s all our favourite times in life and it’s good to relive them.
“It’s also a great opportunity to listen, because we lose our memories as we get older and we’re all going to die at some point, so we need to live it and relive it while we’re here.
“Football is such a wonderful game and in particularly in the eras we started, you know, the camaraderie and mateship was everything.
“There was no money in rugby league, you played it because you loved it and I think we all come from that special time where we really cared for the game and each other and its nice to get together as often as we can.”
Through the Men of League there are a lot of ex footballers from “back in the day” who, for one reason or another, are struggling a little bit and the Men of League endeavor to help out.
“Men of League does a wonderful job supporting these people with these sort of functions and I try to get to as many of them as I can when time permits,” he said.
“I was on my way home from Brisbane to Sydney so I thought, Nambucca Heads is a nice place to stop on the way.”
Phil said he’d spent much of his childhood here in Nambucca and was surprised by just how much the town has changed.
“When I was a kid, when I was very young, we used to spend all our school holidays here, dad was a policeman and he would bring us up to Nambucca Heads ... and that was our holiday,” Phil said.
“It was about an eight hour drive in those days and it was a lot of time in the car with the family, but always looked forward to it. I took a drive around town before the function, its changed a hell of a lot compared to those days.
“Always have fond memories of Nambucca, always loved coming up here.”