SAINTS HONCHO SIGNS OFF
Footy chief heads interstate but beloved club Cairns Saints will go marching on
JUST over a decade ago, Stephen McIntosh first walked into Cairns’ Griffiths Park for a quiet beer on a Saturday afternoon and has hardly left the ground since.
A quick beer with a mate turned into helping cook the barbecue after training during the week and before McIntosh (or Macca as he is affectionately known) knew it, he was running the show as Cairns Saints president.
The tireless and larrikin volunteer of the AFL Cairns club has missed being on hand for just five games in his 11 seasons living in the Far North.
Before taking on the role as president for six seasons, he served as vice-president to David Williams, and will later this year step down as Saints’ longest serving president.
While most would assume the president’s role is to call the shots at committee meetings, it is all-encompassing for Macca, helping out behind the bar or canteen on game day, walking the umpires on and off the ground safely and everything in between.
Premierships are common for most in the black, white and red of Saints in Cairns since their first in 1994 and the Swan Hill product has had his share of success.
“I was pretty lucky to come to a club with all that success, I have seen six premierships in 11 years,” he said.
“We have had some excellent players over my time here and before that.
“Years ago, a mate of mine told me that if I was ever in Cairns, Saints was the club to be involved with.”
The Essendon supporter always loved his footy before relocating to Cairns but never jumped into a significant role at his previous clubs.
“When I first got to Cairns over a decade ago, we had a few beers at the footy on Saturday and then came back to the training on the Thursday night,” McIntosh said.
“I remember Saints team manager Keith Turner there on the barbecue cooking chicken schnitzels and he just took off because he had to be somewhere.
“I jumped in and saved them because they were about to burn and I have been there at the club doing the same things ever since.”
McIntosh, who was nominated for the 2018 AFL Cairns Volunteer of the year award, credits much of the club’s fortunes to former mentor Mark Kennedy, who coached between 2006-2009, which included back-to-back flags in ’08-09, for instilling a strong and positive culture at Griffiths Park. With Saints’ coaching position still in a state of flux for next season and beyond, McIntosh urged the club to reappoint Tim Lamprill as a nonplaying coach, despite the club’s history of relying on just playing-coaches over the journey. “I told them at the committee meeting, for all the stuff Lamprill put up with in 2017, to come back in a second year to get them into a grand final, it is a huge achievement,” McIntosh said.
“We were terrible last year on the field, we had 15 blokes at training and nobody would come down on a Saturday and watch the game. But, it was back to normal in 2018 — the crowd was back and so were the results. You cannot let blokes like that go. He has a lot of patience.”
McIntosh will step down as president at the club’s annual general meeting later this year before relocation to Broome in Western Australia.