RUGBY LEAGUE Tassell’s legacy lives on in game he loved
Cleary’s exit spices up Tigers encounter
THE Cairns rugby league community is wearing black armbands for the loss of one of the region’s most highly-regarded stalwarts of the game.
Tom Tassell died in Brisbane yesterday, surrounded by wife Sandy, sons Brad, Jason and Kris and their families, following a lengthy health battle.
A servant of the game, few people have had as much impact as Tassell on rugby league in the north.
He will be remembered for leaving a lasting legacy through more than 40 years of service to both junior and senior rugby league in Cairns, as either coach, administrator, selector or adviser at all levels.
CDRL secretary Pat Bailey said Tassell would also be remembered for “brightening the day of everyone around him”.
“I’ve got such fond memories of him,” she said.
“He put his whole life into our sport.”
She said he was a “proud man”.
“Even with how he dressed and presented himself – you could go to Tom’s desk at anytime of the day at his work and nothing would be out of place.”
Bailey said it was his attention to detail that made him one of the region’s most highly regarded administrators.
“When you were having a meeting he would be there and highlight everything,” she said.
“He loved the highlighters – lots of green and yellow everywhere.”
Tassell started playing rugby league in Toowoomba as a five-year-old and although he flirted with both Australian rules football and rugby union with success at school, he returned to league in later life.
Playing at Brisbane Wests in an era when the club boasted four internationals, winning a Foley Shield with Mt Isa and playing a touring English team with the Isa Miners were among Tassell’s playing highlights.
“(QRL Northern Region manager) Scott Nosworthy just told me Tom was the first person to score a try for Mt Isa in the Foley Shield,” Bailey said.
“He’d tell you he ran 40m for it – but what happened was a fella got tackled, offloaded to Tom and the line was right there and he fell over it.”
With wife Sandy and young family in tow, Tassell arrived in Cairns from Mt Isa in 1976 and became involved with Kangaroos the following year.
He was instrumental in the growth of the club’s juniors, before going on to hold a wide range of roles for Kangaroos, including coach of the under-18s in 1990 to 1992, when he took the side to three premierships, and longstanding president of the juniors.
He was a life member of Kangaroos, the CDRL and the QRL Northern Division.
In 2017, Tassell and Sandy moved to Brisbane to be closer to family, but they would stay in touch with the Far North rugby league community as often as they could.
“If he was a bit bored waiting
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for something at the hospital, he’d give me a ring and ask how it was all going up here,” Bailey said.
“I’ve lost a friend and rugby league has lost one of it’s biggest supporters.”
Demonstrating Tassell’s legacy, the Tassell Trophy Challenge – named in his honour – began in 2004 and continues as an annual under-14s end-of-season rugby league tournament held at Kangaroos’ home ground, Vico Oval.
Kangaroos president Glenn Stewart said the club’s executive committee held a meeting last night to discuss how they would remember champion.
“Our next home game will be on the 29th,” he said.
“Unfortunately, we don’t have any beforehand but we’ll work something out to honour his memory. He’s a very important part of our … history.”
Tassell’s death comes just days after the North Queensland rugby league community mourned the loss of former Burdekin Roosters player Brayden Carter-Mathews and Edmonton Storm junior Kingi Ford, who both died in separate car accidents on the weekend. the club NRL IT IS the simmering feud no one wants to talk about publicly ahead of tonight’s grudge match between Penrith and Wests Tigers.
But don’t be fooled by denials. The bad blood between the Tigers and Ivan Cleary still runs deep, and front-row enforcer Russell Packer and Cleary’s former chief executive and close mate Justin Pascoe were the two most hurt by Cleary’s dramatic exit.
In the countdown to tonight’s clash, where Cleary will coach against his former club for the first time, News Corp has been told that “Packer did blow up at him” in a meeting Cleary had with his leadership group before his departure.
Cleary’s friendship with Pascoe is also in tatters, with the two apparently not speaking since the day Cleary departed aside from a few text messages.
Pascoe was said to have warned Cleary about the pressure his return to Penrith would put on his son Nathan, but Cleary had made up his mind that it was something he and Nathan wanted to do.
New Tigers skipper Moses Mbye, who Cleary played a significant hand in recruiting from Canterbury, spoke this week about how the players weren’t as “disappointed as you think”, and how the players were “happy” to have Michael Maguire as their new coach.
It’s true, not all the players, especially the younger ones, didn’t see it as such a big issue, even at the time.
But the fact is when Cleary first fronted his leadership group, the mood in the room was anything but happy.
Packer’s confrontation with Cleary was the talk of the club in the days that followed. Pascoe was equally filthy. Initially, Pascoe is said to have struggled to comprehend why Cleary would want to go given how miserable his previous relationship with Phil Gould was.