Winning smiles: 2008 Rochester premiership captain Dean Moon and 1992 skipper Mick Auld were among the special guests at the Royal Melbourne Hotel supporters’ lunch. Simon McCarty, who captained the 2008 grand final-winning team, was unable to attend.
Rochester football’s annual Melbourne luncheon is still one of Brad McEwan’s favourite days of the year, a room full of familiar faces staring back up at him as he continues his life-long connection with the town.
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McEwan, as most will know, was born at Lockington and went to school with a swag of the club’s best sportsmen and women at Rochester High School.
He has been the only master of ceremonies of the event in its six-year history.
The stage at Royal Melbourne Hotel, and the almost 200-strong audience at the event, is a far cry from his hosting role at the Sochi Winter Olympics and his slot as the face of Sports Tonight, but it remains a pernanent fixture on his calendar.
McEwan played his first game for Rochester in 1988, describing his arrival at Moon Oval as part of a “package deal’’.
“Simon (McCarty), Tank (Anthony McPhee) and myself were all at school together. Tank was from Bamawm and they got me because they wanted Tank,” McEwan said.
McEwan, who is a passionate mental health campaigner, now works for himself in a wide range of areas, his workshops focusing on storytelling, culture, leadership, media awareness, and, significantly, mental health and wellbeing.
A Beyond Blue ambassador for the past decade, he lost his father and brother to suicide.
He is also passionately connected to Carlton, a life-long fan because of his uncle Jim Clark.
Clark, who first played with Elmore and coached several teams in the district after retiring from the VFL, was a Carlton best and fairest winner and two-time premiership player.
Among the many familiar faces in the crowd last Friday was a former employer, Bill Fry.
Fry bought Rochester’s sports store during the 1980s and, for a time, McEwan and Tigers premiership captain Simon McCarty — a lifelong friend of McEwan — worked at the store.
Fry, a renwoned winger who played with Kyabram, played with Rochester in the Goulburn Valley league and was the runner for David Williams in Rochester’s 1992 premiership win.
Now at Lakes Entrance, where he opened a sports store and has lived for 30 years, Fry employed McEwan and McCarty as teenagers to work part-time at his store.
“I remember we left them to run the shop for two weeks while Jen (his wife) and I were on holidays,” Fry said.
Fry is a regular visitor to the area, visiting his wife’s 90-year-old mother Joan at her Dawes Rd home every three months.
Fry’s father Peter was a renowned sportsman and a former Kyabram district league McNamara Medallist with Merrigum. Bill captained his father and late brother, Mick, to Cooma’s first A-grade circket title. Peter Fry died at 95.
He owned the sports store for six years, but will never forgot how he ended his playing days.
“I played about 30 games for Rochester under Geoff Rosenow and it was my first seconds game after coming back from a hamstring,” Fry said.
“It was the last game I played, but I wanted to be involved so I became the runner.”
Rodney “Bluey” Callahan doesn’t miss a Melbourne Supporters’ Luncheon and is a consistent benefactor of the club, through his successful real estate group.
He played with the club in 1993-94, including the controversial grand final loss to Shepparton following an after-the-siren goal.
Callahan, who is an ex-brothe-in-law of Shane Warne (Warne married his sister Simone), joined the Tigers from Williamstown and said he met some of the greatest people in his life while at the club.
“David Williams, and his family, took me into their hotel as if I was part of the family,” he said.
“And Andrew Sharp used to pick me up and drop me off every weekend.
“I love Rochy and will continue to support them as much as I can.”
Good sports: Bill Fry, who finished a glittering Goulburn Valley League football career at Rochester, with luncheon master of ceremonies Brad McEwan. The Lockington-born former television personality has hosted all of the six supporters’ luncheons and, while at high school, was also a part-time employee of Fry’s Rochester sports shop.
Key figures: Rochester Football Netball Club president Justin Cleary with former grand final player and current club sponsor Rodney “Bluey” Callahan. The Melbourne real estate company director again played a key fundraising role in the luncheon.
