Pillar of Canterbury and Kiwi rugby league
Former Kiwis’ coach Frank Endacott walked to the funeral parlour podium, looked out at scores of Canterbury rugby league luminaries and thought: ‘‘We’re here to celebrate the greatest of them all’’ – Mel Cooke.
‘‘Canterbury rugby league has produced many great players over the years and many of them were there [at Cooke’s funeral on Tuesday]. There were some great names there, but none greater than Mel, in my book,’’ Endacott said.
It wasn’t only the rugby league fraternity who came to pay their last respects. As Endacott quipped: ‘‘Half of Hornby was there’’.
Mel Cooke, who died last week aged 79, was renowned for his indefatigable stamina on the field. With his wife, Phyllis, at his side, he fought a five-year illness with the same fortitude, resilience and courage he brought to the football field.
The industrious loose forward was the only Canterbury player named in the New Zealand Rugby League Team of the Century. Longtime friend, former workmate and Hornby teammate Brian Langton insists Cooke was ‘‘better than Mark Graham’’, the former Kiwis captain who was voted New Zealand Player of the Century.
Cooke scored 21 tries in 52 matches for the Kiwis and played 22 consecutive tests between 1959 and 1964.
He captained the Kiwis in eight Tests over 1962-1964, beating Great Britain by two record 19-point margins at Carlaw Park in 1962. He was in charge for the controversial 1-2 series loss in Australia in 1963 and a 3-0 series defeat of France in New Zealand in 1964.
Endacott said Cooke was held in huge regard by the Great Britain and Australian rugby league communities and was famous for having an extraordinarily low pulse rate, ‘‘similar to Peter Snell’’ the Olympic Games middle distance champion.
New Zealand Kiwis Association president Don Hammond said Cooke’s heart rate was detected by a doctor in Yorkshire where the Kiwis were based on their 1961-62 tour of Great Britain and France.
Dr Martin Gott, who was conducting research into sportspeople’s recovery responses, was ‘‘quite amazed at Mel’s heart rate,’’ Hammond said.
Jim Bond, the Canterbury and Kiwis standoff half, recalled receiving treatment with Cooke in the physio’s room at the Ilkley Moor hotel. At one point, the physio ‘‘tested Mel’s pulse and said ‘just wait there’. He grabbed a blanket and put it around Mel’s shoulders and ran out of the room to phone for an ambulance.
‘‘Mel asked what was going on, and the physio said: ‘your pulse is only 52’. Mel said: ‘That’s normal’.’’
Although Cooke was a natural athlete, he also worked hard at his fitness. Endacott remembered meeting Cooke on pre-season training runs around Hornby streets. ‘‘Mel had 14 years on me, but he used to go past me as if I was tied to the rail.’’
Melville Lance Cooke was a Hornby man to the core, living most of his life in the suburb. Brian Langton said his friend attended Christchurch Technical College before taking up a carpentry apprenticeship and began working as a maintenance carpenter at the Islington freezing works.
He advanced through the grades with Hornby to premier ranks in the early 1950s. Cooke made his Canterbury debut in 1953 as a 19-year-old scrumhalf, but later moved to loose forward and made the South Island team.
In 1959, he was selected for a national coaching school in Palmerston North. Twelve of the 13-strong team went on to win selection for the Kiwis tour of Australia and five players, Cooke, Don Hammond, Graham Kennedy, Billy Snowden and Graeme Farrar, became future Kiwis’ captains.
Cooke was vice-captain and Hammond captain for the Kiwis’ tour of Great Britain and France in 1961-62. The pair, who both scored tries in the first test against Great Britain, roomed together and Hammond recalled his friend had ‘‘a great knowledge of the game and always encouraged players to up their standards’’.
Bond, a former Kiwis’ captain whose provincial and test careers paralleled Cooke’s, said: ‘‘Mel was a great leader. He did the work first and you felt obliged to follow suit.’’
Cooke’s stellar season came in 1962 when he captained Hornby to the Canterbury club championship title, Canterbury to a Northern Union Cup win over Auckland, the South Island to beat the North Island and the Kiwis to two record victories over Great Britain.
Cooke retired from the Kiwis in 1964. He spent four seasons in Canberra as a player-coach, represented Riverina against the Great Britain tourists in 1966 and was selected for New South Wales Country.
But he returned to Christchurch in 1969 to coach Hornby to a club premiership title. He served as a Canterbury selector and coach in 1971.
Brian Langton said his friend was a devoted family man. Cooke married wife Phyllis in 1957 and the couple had three children. Phyllis lovingly cared for her husband throughout his five-and-ahalf year battle with cancer.
Cooke enjoyed the family bach at Wainui for 30 years. He was known to run up the Banks Peninsula hillsides long after he hung up his boots.
Friends and former teammates described him as a humble and jovial man, who always had a smile – apart from on the football paddock where his ‘‘blazing eyes’’ bore into anyone letting their standards drop, something Cooke could never contemplate.
Endacott valued Cooke’s advice throughout his own coaching career. ‘‘Why wouldn’t you tap into the knowledge of one of the most experienced and best players in the world?’’ Cooke was a regular spectator at Leslie Park, the Hornby Panthers’ home ground, but Endacott said he never pushed himself forward.
‘‘Most people wouldn’t have known they had one of the greatest players in the world in their midst.’’
Melville Lance Cooke, born Christchurch, May 30, 1934. Died Christchurch, September 5, 2013. Survived by wife Phyllis, son Neville and daughters Linda and Lisa.
His mates called him Superman. Career fire officer John Heslop was a big man, powerful, superbly fit and humble to the point of self-deprecation. For want of a replacement heart, he died two weeks ago. He was 62.
Several hundred firefighters in full-dress uniform formed a guard of honour as his body was taken from Christchurch’s transitional cathedral after the funeral service.
Heslop’s coffin was placed on a vintage Dennis fire engine by officers resplendent in shining silver helmets from an earlier age. The spectacular scene indicated the esteem in which ‘‘Superman’’ was held by his colleagues.
And not just by colleagues. While battling his own heart problems for more than a decade, Heslop was an inspiring mentor to fellow heart patients and their families.
The former rugby, rugby league and soccer player ran, cycled, swam and worked out in a gym regularly. At 48, in 1998, he was jogging up Innes Rd, St Albans, when he suddenly crumpled to the ground. His heart had stopped. A runner behind him applied CPR and started his heart again. Emergency services from the Cranford St station arrived quickly. Heslop was saved.
Doctors said his ultra-fitness had made the difference between life and death.
Heslop had recognised no earlier symptoms or warnings. He had tackled everything in life with gusto. Born and raised in Greymouth, he moved to Canterbury and joined a volunteer fire brigade while working around Dunsandel. He signed on with the New Zealand Fire Service at Christchurch and began basic training in 1973.
The physical demands of the course were easy for Heslop. After a day’s work, he would run from the central city, over the Port Hills and back again, before tea. He biked and ran everywhere, making cycle tours all over the South
John Heslop: Island. He lifted weights at the gym at least five days a week.
‘‘Any physical activity, he was into it,’’ his wife, Jenni, says.
The couple met on a blind date in 1993 and married in 1994.
The cardiac arrest forced changes in Heslop’s life. He was a guinea pig in the early days of implanted cardiac devices (ICDs). He was fitted with an implanted defibrillator to re-start his heart, since it might stop again at any time. He resumed work and got back into his exercise regime.
Jenni says the fire service was like ‘‘a giant family’’ to him, such was the support he received. Though he would not drive a fire engine again, he was appointed to a new position as support officer to the volunteer brigades of North Canterbury, from Kaikoura to Oxford. In a dozen years visiting and helping these units, Heslop came to love the country regions.
He was involved with establishment of a volunteer peersupport group for firefighters. Fire Service welfare officer Jim Ryburn says Heslop put huge effort into the group’s activities, attending serious incidents and counselling officers affected by injuries, death, grief and destruction.
‘‘He was enormously well thought of by all involved. And it was all done on a voluntary basis,’’ Ryburn says. He had a strong and winning personality and an ability to empathise with people.
These same qualities made Heslop a welcome figure at Christchurch Hospital. A frequent patient himself, he often visited to help other patients. He joined the ICD Society to offer support and encouragement to people waiting for, or having recently received, implants. He co-ordinated members’ visits from 1999 and was vice chairman of the group from 2008 to 2012.
Society spokeswoman Valerie Cook says Heslop made many of the visits himself – reassuring patients and ‘‘cutting an impressive figure in his fire service uniform’’.
‘‘The ward staff thought very highly of him with his mentoring skills and positive attitude towards life. He was instrumental in helping many people accept their situation, developing a positive outlook and getting on with life,’’ Cook says.
Hospital cardiac technologist Jude Greenslade says patients ‘‘feeling vulnerable facing a huge unknown’’ gained much from Heslop’s visits.
They were uplifted by ‘‘this big, healthy-looking fireman coming in, saying he had had an implanted device for years and got on with life – his very presence, his determination and positivity not to let circumstances get the better of him’’, Greenslade says.
After 40 years in the Fire Service, Heslop’s health slipped. After 18 months on the waiting list for a heart transplant, active almost to the end, his life slipped away.
‘‘He put up with everything with great humility and dignity. He never complained,’’ Jenni says.
John Hugh Heslop, born Greymouth, September 26, 1950; died Christchurch, August 27, 2013. Survived by wife Jenni and his family.