With the testosterone knee-deep, as old footballers tried to outdo each other, who would have thought there would still be enough tears to wash it all away?
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But when Daniher’s Drive rolled into Wayne ‘Whoopy’ Windridge’s Echuca backyard, there soon wasn’t a dry eye in the house.
Because in December 2016, Whoopy was told he had motor neurone disease and given just 18 months to two years.
Now, however, the feisty 72-year-old reckons he might, maybe, hopefully, have one more Christmas left in him.
And why not, because like Neale Daniher, Whoopy has stared this insidious killer in the face, and is not going down without a fight.
So when word got out the Danihers, the face of Victoria’s fight against this death sentence, were dropping into the neighbourhood, the locals started coming from every direction, decked out in Essendon and Melbourne colours, way too many Collingwood outfits (including Whoopy) — and there was the occasional Cats fan.
Then the bragging began, about whose club had won the most, cries of Bombers, Demons, Pies, Blues and, one wag at the back, with “Locky”.
Which wasn’t so funny in the end — Whoopy played in 12 grand finals for his beloved Lockington in the old Echuca league, and won 11 of them. And still hasn’t got over losing that 12th one.
“That 12th one would have made it three in a row for us, and we were 16 points up at halftime against Moama, but they came back out in the second half and went bang, bang, bang and we never saw them again,” he lamented.
“I played as a rover, or on the half-forward flank/forward pocket and won the team’s goalkicking award eight, or was it 10, times?
“And missed the league award by two goals in my last season. My back had been hurt badly in an early tackle so they propped me up in the goal square. I had six by halftime against Bunnaloo but by then could hardly stand, so they wouldn’t let me back on in the second half.
“I was so crook that when Marie drove me home, she had all the kids jammed into the front seat with her so I could be stretched out across the back seat.”
But if some of the good old days weren’t so good at times, Whoopy is not just glad, he is grateful he got to live long enough to see one more premiership for his beloved Magpies, wrapped in contentment (and his Collingwood blanket) in his electric wheelchair, with a club flag flying proudly from his garage roof.
Right now, the memories — and Whoopy has a lifetime of them — are, increasingly, his world. A world that has been shrinking with every deterioration in his condition.
On Friday, however, the world came to Whoopy, and he knew nothing about it until a few hours before the MND caravan was due to arrive at his door.
It was a heads-up that still didn’t prepare him for what was about to unfold: Anthony, Terry and Chris Daniher, along with Neale’s son Ben, who turned 30 the same day, striding into Whoopy’s backyard, along with a retinue of photographers, videographers, journalists, Daniher Drive staff, family, friends, neighbours and stickybeaks.
A once-in-a-lifetime get together that nearly ended prematurely when Terry Daniher caught sight of way too much black and white and shouted “everybody back on the bus, we’re out of here”.
That started the laughter, and plenty of it, with Whoopy almost developing whiplash as he sat in the middle of the mayhem, his head spinning in every direction to try to keep up.
But if things had been emotional, nothing compared to lifelong friend Peter Green producing a set of WARNE number plates, which he gave to Whoopy to present to the Daniher Drive team for a fundraising auction.
Peter says he bought that set, and SWARNE, in 1998 after watching Shane Warne play and deciding he was “really going to be something”. He would have bought WARNIE too, but didn’t have enough money at the time.
In the 25 years since then, he says he has had many requests from cricket lovers and Warne fans to try and buy them, with offers having gone as high as $50,000 for just one set of the plates from a South African enthusiast, with just as much interest from India.
“I could not think of a better thing to do with the plates than help my mate Whoopy — we have been friends for a very long time,” Peter said.
“And if it can help others not go through what he and his family have been facing, well, that would be irreplaceable.
“It would really make these number plates worth something.”
Mind you, the pristine plates have been a little lucky to have come this far after a mild altercation between Peter, Warne and Jason Dunstall.
When sporting identity John Forbes was having a This Is Your Life event at Crown, the star of the night arranged for Peter to be seated next to Warne so he could ask him to autograph the plates.
“A request Warne declined, saying he couldn’t disfigure government property, at which point Jason Dunstall grabbed the plates, told Warnie he was ‘as weak as p**s’ and signed them himself — hardly what I was looking for,” Peter recalled.
“When I later tried to clean his signature off the plates it started to damage them, so I had to go back to VicRoads and get a second set, which is why the package is dated 2015.
“Being able to hand over these plates today brings me much joy with the thought the funds will help the outstanding Daniher research cause — and as a thanks for the Drive team coming to visit my mate Whoopy and his wonderful wife, Marie.”
And through it all, Marie could be seen dabbing at her eyes with a tissue as she watched the way her man’s face lit up from the moment the Danihers arrived.
But it would be Marie who would reduce everyone to tears soon after when thanking the Daniher brothers for their visit, Peter for the licence plates and everyone else who had turned up for the occasion.
She spoke of her husband’s determination and she said without the support of MND Victoria, which has received significant funding assistance from Daniher’s FightMND, not only wouldn’t she have Whoopy at home, she probably wouldn’t have him at all.
“MND Victoria provided us with his electric chair, his hoist so we can move him around, his ventilators, it’s the only way I can keep him here, and here’s where he’s staying,” Marie said.
That was one pledge of love too many for the Danihers, for Peter Green, even for Whoopy (and a good many of those watching it all unfold), and the tears flowed.
This unexpected emotional rollercoaster was also fast draining Whoopy’s energy levels, and Marie was keen to get him back to his ventilator, back to some peace and quiet — even agreeing he would not be up to an interview until much later.
‘Much later’ found Whoopy, mask on, still sound asleep in his wheelchair, and Marie struggling to get off her bed as well, where she had been taking a long overdue power nap herself.
The day really had taken it out of Whoopy, but it also impacted everyone involved.
Speaking after the presentations and happy snaps, when the crowd had thinned a little, Anthony Daniher, eyes still misty, was still slightly choking up about how much Whoopy reminded him of Neale.
“His sense of humour, the way he is having a crack at every day, the way he, Marie and their family have been able to inject joy into today, and a lot of other days by the sound of it, is just like Neale,” he said.
“Although Wayne kind of broke my heart a little when he rolled out all that Collingwood gear, but I think we can (almost) forgive that because his team’s win has made him so happy.”
Anthony also brushed aside his reaction, and the reaction of his brothers, when Marie Windridge talked about the amazing help from MND Victoria.
He says the tragedy of working with MND patients is that right now there is no really good news to report, that “every touch of MND is a negative” until you meet people such as Whoopy — and his brother Neale.
Just as Anthony is as adamant there are no crocodile tears for the cameras here.
“Look, we are country people, just like those here today, and this is all real,” Anthony said.
“When you can see someone like Wayne, in his condition, genuinely tell you the worst thing in life is seeing a young mother of two diagnosed with MND, well, doesn’t that say everything you need to know about how amazing this guy is?
“For the Daniher Drive to come here today and receive that incredibly generous gift from Peter Green and Wayne is great for the campaign, but to see the care, which is what really counts, is beautiful.
“My brothers and I are there whenever Neale asks, but it is his wife, Jan, and their children, Bec and Ben, who are the driving force behind it all now — and people like Wayne and his family.”
While Team Daniher is happy to talk MND and fundraising, Whoopy and Marie, now wide awake and rolling, are far more interested in talking about their life pre- and post-diagnosis.
Those might be separate worlds, but someone forgot to tell them.
Whoopy, had he been born much later, might have had a different nickname altogether. On his birth certificate, he is known as Wayne William Windridge — WWW.
But as no-one circa the 1940s had heard of the world wide web, Wayne William Windridge would get his nickname from a young neighbour on Gunbower Island with a stammer, who could only come up with “Whoo, Whoo, Whoo”, which would, eventually, evolve into Whoopy.
And life didn’t exactly get off to a flier for the Whoop. A premature baby, he weighed little more than 1kg at birth in the Kerang Hospital, where he was kept in a shoebox lined with cotton wool and was fed with an eyedropper.
At 18 months, he ended up in an infectious diseases ward with diphtheria, where he would spend the next three months, separated from his family.
Then he would not need another doctor until 2016, when he was diagnosed with MND.
He’s far more interested in talking about his playing days, from the Gunny thirds to his family’s move to Lockington when he was 14.
Where he also took up cricket at Bamawm Extension, and dabbled with indoor cricket and squash. And, along with his 11 Lockington flags, won premierships in them all.
But it’s always been footy first for Whoopy.
Excluding junior games, he would go on to play 364 at Locky (reserves and seniors) between 1969 and 1986.
But as the couple reminisce, and start correcting each other about years, months and the people who were there at the time, nothing can disguise the underlying tenderness and love they have for each other, and have had almost since the day they met — and since their June 12 wedding at St Mary’s way back in 1971.
Marie’s eyes rarely leave him, sensitive to his every need. His children and grandchildren, some of whom are still in the house, don’t pass without reaching out to touch him.
Kathy, Brent and Ricky — and their children — are still very much a part of everyday family life at this home.
The couple laugh about their honeymoon — a bus ride to Sydney (further than Wayne had been in his life). Incredibly, it was during the footy season. The day he married, the team was going for its 25th win in a row, but without its little star it lost — Whoopy’s number was 25.
The honeymoon also included a bus trip to Katoomba (even though the bus caught fire) and a hotel there — “the first time I ever washed his jocks”, Marie chimed in.
Or those early family camping trips when several of them shared a two-man tent, two mattresses and one Styrofoam Esky as the fridge. Although that would eventually be upgraded to the caravan, about which more than one of his grandchildren have politely inquired what he might want done with it “when you die”.
There was the dairy farm, the job at Simplot, a world ruled by the footy season, holidays ruled by when the cows had been dried off and sometimes a giddy two weeks might be available to get away. But other times, Marie was the one in the shed milking while Whoopy was at the game.
“We knew something was wrong when I was working at Simplot. My feet swapped from a normal step to what was a sort of flat-footed slap,” Whoopy said.
“I hadn’t really noticed it until Simplot, where we would walk down this long corridor and my feet made this slapping noise and where, for a while, I was identified as Slapper.”
Eventually, inevitably, it was the doctors and rounds of testing before the diagnosis with a guaranteed death sentence was delivered.
Their GP, who took the call from their specialist and broke the news to them, also wept.
“He told us he had never had to deliver that diagnosis, it really shook him,” Marie said.
She says they then came home, looked at each other, and said, “What will we do now?”
Turns out the last thing on their agenda was self-pity or defeat.
“We weren’t a mess, we didn’t come home and collapse, we just had a few beers and a think about the future — and out came the bucket list.”
Having been earlier bitten by the travel bug, the couple decided they would hit the road while the going was good.
And proceeded to criss-cross the globe, from Egypt’s Giza Plains to the back of Bourke in their caravan.
And there’s a timeshare in Bright booked for the end of this month, although both admit it is getting tough to cope with all Whoopy’s equipment, and the hoist now needed to move him around for even the most simple and basic of functions.
Although, it took a pandemic to slow down their hectic travel schedule. Now it has been brought almost to a standstill because of his worsening condition.
But if you do want to get a few tears in your own eyes, you should have been there when they talked about their courting days.
When their eyes first met at a Locky dance, where, they tell, they both thought “wow, look at him/her”.
Then, like it was all those years ago, they might have been the only people in the room.
Reminding each other of how it went, of how they never spent a night together at each other’s house, how he refused to partner Marie for her deb ball, that she is a year older.
Or that, at night, they could look out the windows of their Lockington homes and see each other’s bedroom lights at night.
“We were very timid, I think it was three or four dates before we even kissed,” Whoopy admitted sheepishly.
A love that has been measured in decades is now down to months, maybe even weeks, but while one of them breathes, it will live forever.
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