A tribute to well-known Randwick rugby identity, Peter “Marzo” Meagher, one of the 15 victims of the Bondi shooting last Sunday.
Every rugby club has one.
They’re usually older, and more often than not, with a few scars around their eyes from battles long gone. But they’ve not only worn the jersey, they’ve bled for it. They not only love the club and all that it represents, but the club loves them back every bit as passionately.
Bondi Beach shooting victim Peter Meagher was a beloved member of Randwick Rugby Club.
And, most importantly, they’re always around. You see them before training, during training, after training, all day at the matches, in the dressing room afterwards, and ever and always at drinks afterwards.
They’re not doing such things for a year or two, they’re there for decades. While others come and go as the seasons change, these rugby treasures are the beating heart of the club, the ones who know everyone, and their children.
They know that Jacko just got a promotion, that Johno’s mum has been sick lately, and – hang on, I remember you – you’re the bloke who scored the try after the whistle to beat Gordon in the second grade final back in the early ’80s. Welcome back.
At Randwick, that bloke was Peter Meagher, universally known as “Marzo”, and even as stalwarts go, he was a standout, having filled so many roles, from player, to first-grade team manager, to referee, to mentor to young players, to all-round volunteer.
Beyond that, as someone whose grandfather was the famous Randwick and Wallaby centre Wally Meagher – credited with inventing the “running rugby” style of play with his great Galloping Greens and Wallabies contemporary Cyril Towers – and whose father was long-time Randwick club president Ron Meagher, Marzo was Randwick rugby to his very core, and had been all his life.
Players line up for the national anthems at Coogee Oval before a match between Randwick and Argentina in 2019.Credit: Getty Images
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.
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.
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