2 months ago
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The Meaghers were no less than Randwick royalty going back for nigh on a century, and through the decades Marzo had gone from babe in arms in a green beanie to promising back in the juniors, to colt, to grade player, to all the club roles mentioned above – to Marzo, just Marzo – achieving that level of love where just a single moniker does it, for everyone to know who you are talking about.
A detective with NSW Police, who retired a couple of years ago – after 34 years on the dangerous front line – to do a little work as a professional photographer, it was happenstance that placed him at Bondi Beach last Sunday evening, taking photos of a large Hanukkah gathering for the local Jewish community.
That he had been killed in the appalling mass shooting began to filter through the Randwick rugby community late on Sunday night, and then swept through like a southerly buster hitting Coogee Beach on a blowy summer afternoon.
Marzo. He’s gone.
“At first I just couldn’t believe it,” said Wallabies great and former Randwick Rugby Club president Simon Poidevin.
“It just didn’t seem possible that such a great man as him could have died like that. Marzo? Surely, not Marzo? He was the heart and soul of everything, and no one could believe that such a heart as his was no longer beating.”
The entire Randwick rugby community felt the same.
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What to do? How to honour him? That has been a large part of the conversation since, but last Monday evening, just 24 hours after the shooting, they did what he would have done.
They gathered at Coogee Oval, coming from everywhere, to pay tribute, to weep, to reminisce, to raise a glass to his precious memory.
“It was stunning,” Poidevin said.
“So many Randwick people coming together, showing their love for a truly great rugby bloke. For someone else, Marzo would have been the first one to organise something like that.
“But for Marzo himself, it just didn’t take too much organisation. They came because they loved him – a truly great Randwick and rugby man.”
Funeral details are yet to be announced – his body has not yet been released by the coroner - but expect a mass of green and many tears over Coogee way. But there will be laughs later, too, at the memory of a life well lived, and great times had together, no matter the appalling way he died.
Deepest condolences to his widow, Virginia. Your late husband was a very great rugby man, and his legacy will live on.
