South Sydney owners Packer, Crowe and Cannon-Brookes need to support Mario Fenech

Mario Fenech has given more than any person should to the game of rugby league, now it’s the turn of those who benefited from his commitment to give something back to Mario, writes Paul Kent.

IF the obituaries are honest when they eventually write about Mario Fenech they will say he gave his life for rugby league.

Not all of it but, as his neurologist Dr Rowena Mobbs revealed Sunday night on Channel 7’s Spotlight, certainly the last part of it will be sacrificed.

Fenech is nearing the advanced stages of dementia and will soon need fulltime care.

His life will undoubtedly be shortened as a consequence of his condition, costing himself a good 10 years or more.

“Over time, people get worse and eventually they end up needing care and dying from it,” Dr Mobbs told Spotlight.

Fenech is 60 but she has not seen a brain in such a state of disrepair in even some of her 80-year-old patients. Others believe he has gone the other way, that his conversations and thought have the complexity of an eight-year-old.

It is a terrible thing to write, and to witness.

Mario Fenech looks on during a South Sydney NRL training session at Redfern Oval on September 13, 2022. Picture: Jason McCawley/Getty Images

I met Mario when he moved from South Sydney to Norths and I was poorly paid, and a more poorly performing, lower grade player at the Bears.

Nobody could guess how much he helped the young players at the club in terms of encouragement and support, to say nothing of what he brought to the first grade team.

He would walk into the gym before training and slip another 10kg on the squat rack and when you shot him a concerning look he’d say, “Trust me, I believe in you, you can do it.”

I wrote a story on him that I sold to Rugby League Week for $400 that took a week and a half to write but which was crucial in helping me get a job writing about the game, so you could say you can blame him. I lived fat that week.

Some days you would be in the dressing room before first grade ran out and they would all be standing around revving each other up, saying they were going to do this and do that, and Mario would always pick out the big threat in the opposition team and say leave him to me.

That’s the sort of teammate he was. What toll he paid is now there to see.

For years I’ve witnessed his deterioration, as many have around the game and which many kept secret out of respect for Mario, who was terribly embarrassed about it early on, and in somewhat of a denial over it.

Russell Crowe and good mate James Packer could afford to help Fenech cover his costs. Picture: Charles Miranda

Every time you saw him he’d grab you and give a hug with one arm, the other shaking your hand.

“How’s your family?” he’d say.

Over the past decade he’d grab you and ask and then five minutes later turn back to you and grab you and ask again.

And then again. It was clear what was happening.

He has moved on from the embarrassment of acknowledging his illness, though, the dementia perhaps taking his last piece of stubborn pride, which was formidable, that blocked him from confirming what everyone was seeing.

South Sydney part owner Mike Cannon-Brookes (C) is one of Australia’s richest men. Picture: Jonathan Ng

How quickly Fenech’s deterioration accelerates, as Fenech’s wife Rebecca fights to protect him, is unknown. We all hope it is slow.

There is barely a happy place to look in Fenech’s story in recent times, other than the unbeatable spirit that lives within.

A devastating fallout of his dementia was that, as his memory worsened and his ability to make decisions grew worse, he forgot to maintain his health and life insurance.

“What happened,” Rebecca told Spotlight, “he stopped paying the bills because he couldn’t remember.

“I just found them all in a drawer. Six months worth of bills that were never paid.”

Mario Fenech chats with Damien Cook during training in 2018. Picture: AAP Image/Joel Carrett

The insurance companies, the stellar companies they are, no longer feel compelled to pay Fenech any insurance. Somewhere, somebody is getting a bonus for this.

Rebecca has returned to work to help pay their bills and Fenech spends each day in a routine worked to the minute to prevent him getting lost or confused.

Rebecca worries about how they will survive on her wages once Fenech needs that fulltime care.

The answer should be obvious.

The Rabbitohs are owned by two of Australia’s richest men, Mike Cannon-Brookes (estimated worth $22.1 billion) and James Packer (estimated worth $5.3 billion) and a man who knows the value of publicity, the virile actor Russell Crowe.

Despite his illness Fenech regularly, and some might say increasingly, trots out at South Sydney training. Among other things, he stands as a symbolic link to its past.

He was at training again Tuesday.

The Rabbitohs privatisation was one of the more polarising chapters of the NRL and Fenech was a staunch supporter from day one.

The club has gone on the hard sell ever since as a club with a conscience, from taking poker machines out of the leagues club to launching the Souths Cares charity, which helps the underprivileged.

He has been loyal the entire trip.

The least these three wealthy men can do, as Fenech fights to remain healthy and the Mario we know slowly disappears, is care for him for however many days he has left.

He helped dig the well they drink from, and gave more than he had to give.