Cairns rugby league administrator will be ‘greatly missed’
Cairns and District Rugby League treasurer, historian, life member, and the man who literally wrote the book on Cairns rugby league, Martin Hurst, has died at age 69.
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CAIRNS and District Rugby League treasurer, historian, life member, and the man who literally wrote the book on Cairns rugby league, Martin Hurst, has died, aged 69.
The league confirmed the news on Wednesday morning, with chairman Colin Moore and secretary Pat Bailey leading the tributes for their friend and colleague, who was in his 21st season as treasurer.
Hurst is being remembered as a selfless, straight-shooting and “incredibly dedicated” administrator of rugby league.
“It is a very sad day, he will be greatly missed by everyone in the community,” Moore said.
“He was a real stickler for getting things right and making sure things were in order.
“If you ever wanted a letter done, you’d just say to Martin what you needed it for and he’d draft it up for you and get all the right content in there.
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“He’s done a lot for rugby league and was very particular in everything that he did.”
Moore, who is in his 10th year as CDRL chairman, said Hurst was never afraid to call it how he saw it.
“He was his own person,” Moore said.
“He knew all the rules, so no one could put anything over him, and he had some characteristics that were a bit sharp at different times.
“Sometimes you had to make a few apologies to different people — ‘oh, that’s just Martin’ — but it was his passion for rugby league.”
Bailey said Hurst played an important role in helping Cairns secure more NRL matches during his time as treasurer.
“As (North Queensland Cowboys Director of Football) Peter Parr said to me in a text message this morning, he always had his i’s dotted and t’s crossed,” she said.
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“He was a joy to work with and if you asked him to do something, it was always done and it was done without complaining.
“With those NRL games, he was absolutely brilliant. A lot of the money that we made from those matches was due to Martin’s handling of the coffers.”
The CDRL will pay tribute to Hurst with a minute silence at the first round of the Lightning Challenge, a round-robin series featuring the Northern Pride, Brothers Cairns and Tully Tigers that will kick off on August 8 at Barlow Park.
Hurst served as CDRL treasurer for more than two decades up until his death, but his affiliation with rugby league started long before that.
He first started volunteering while at school, helping his great-uncle — the Brothers Rugby League Football Club providore — sell drinks from the club’s first clubhouse on the corner of Anderson and English streets, where the current Leagues Club has stood since 1995.
Hurst joined Brothers’ management committee in 1981, becoming secretary in 1984-85 before leaving his job at the Cairns Regional Electricity Board in the Far North to work for AGC Finance in Brisbane, under former Brothers Cairns A-grade coach and Rabbitohs general manager Shane Richardson.
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His connection with rugby league continued when Hurst joined the Toowoomba All Whites and Brisbane Easts committees through the late 1980s and early 90s.
He contacted the CDRL to volunteer on return to the Far North in 1996, after spending three years in a seminary to become a priest, and in 1999 started a stint as treasurer that continued for more than 20 seasons.
As well as holding the purse strings at one of Queensland’s biggest country leagues, Hurst was the CDRL’s go-to man for information on and assistance with applying for grants and league-wide initiatives, such as subsidies for referees’ and player insurance.
Also an amateur historian, Hurst set out to compile the history of rugby league in the Cairns region in 2004, putting the call out to the Far North rugby league community.
After more than a decade of collating and researching, he released his 164-page book, The History of Rugby League in Cairns District, in 2016.
It was the first time the region’s rugby league history had been compiled into one book.
Originally published as Cairns rugby league administrator will be ‘greatly missed’