Paul Kent: Con Ange an unlikely hero in fight against MND
Paul Gallen has learnt how to take a punch in boxing but his friend Con Ange hit him hardest of all when he told the former NRL star of his private battle.
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Paul Gallen has known about unlikely heroes all his career.
Heck, it was his career.
Gallen retired from footy and somehow created another unlikely career inside the boxing ring, doing what he always did in footy, which was to outwork the odds.
Anyway, a few years ago Gallen got a call from his friend Con Ange to have lunch, which they did regularly, and Gallen thought nothing more of it and headed into the city at the required time but the moment he walked in he knew something was different.
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The pair have been friends since about 2006, maybe 2007, when Gallen found himself sidelined again for a sin only Cronulla fans could forgive him for, and Blake Green introduced him to Con and his suspension came up almost immediately.
He remembers saying what a joke it was that he was suspended, that it did not deserve a suspension and the game was going soft and a lot of those things footballers say out loud and everybody around them always just nods at, afraid to pull them up.
“No mate, you’re an idiot,” Con said. “You shouldn’t have done it.”
Gee, this bloke tells you where you stand, Gallen thought. He liked that.
With honesty comes trust, and almost immediately their friendship was strong. Con helped Gallen with advice on investments and how to set himself up after footy.
And then a few years ago Gallen walked into a cafe for lunch with his mate and sensed something was wrong by who else was also there, and Con told them all he had Motor Neurone Disease (MND).
Gallen did not know what to do. His whole life was about achievement, about setting goals and making them real through stubborn hard work.
What could he do in this situation?
At some point Con got up to make a call and once he was out of earshot Benny Elias, who also got the call, began to fill them in on what to expect.
Elias was best friends with Scott Gale, his former Balmain teammate, who was 39 when he died in 2004 from MND.
Ange is another unlikely hero.
Last month, with Gallen in the final stages of his preparation to fight Josh Aloiai, Con called another lunch, this time at his home.
Gallen did not know what to expect this time either.
Con has dealt with his MND throughout with healthy doses of laughter — what choice have you got? — and so he called this lunch The Last Supper.
The lunch was called for the close ones. The friends he could rely on.
Around the tables were a group of people nobody else could assemble. Few had any reason to be in each other’s company other than to be there for the man who called them and what he meant to them.
There was Gallen and Elias. At the other end of the table was Rod Reddy and beside Reddy was former NFL star Colin Scotts. A little further along there was Matt Nable, who took a break from a movie set where he is working on his first Oscar to head along.
There was former NSW Opposition leader Kerry Chikarovski and seated not far from her was Professor Dominic Rowe, who might be on the brink of world-changing research.
At the time, what talk there was of Gallen’s fight was all around him fighting Manly’s Josh Aloiai, so he was on the water. Now he fights Darcy Lussick, in 11 days in Newcastle.
They were all there for Con.
Professor Rowe explained the disease and how his team has turned their thinking upside down.
Motor neurons, he said, were like the great knights. And like the knights, who had valets to attend to them and repair them, the motor neurons in our bodies have valets called microglia, which help repair the damaged motor neurons.
It all goes wrong in MND, though, because the microglia change from valet to assassin and begin attacking the motor neurons.
Rowe’s trial would be a world first, targeting the microglia and turning them from assassins back into valets, and nobody knew if it would be painful or cause damage or what the outcome might be, but he said Ange had volunteered to be the first in the world to trial it.
He got out of treatment on Friday.
His brain will be scanned and compared to the scan taken before he went into treatment and if there is improvement, if what they are hoping for becomes the gift, we will all step into a different world.
For too long MND has been a disease that we are comfortable to live with as a society, when Rowe has no doubt that with proper funding it could be cured.
Last year 900-odd people in Australia died from Covid, 800-odd died from MND, yet hundreds of millions more was spent by government on Covid than MND. Yet MND’s economic cost to the country is about $4 billion a year.
With government not prepared to provide more funding, Con has organised a fundraiser in February.
Sir Ian Botham will be guest speaker. Reddy, Scotts, Elias and Gallen will donate their time, as will Nick Farr-Jones, Shane Dye and Carl Webb, the former NRL player diagnosed with MND last year.
Ray Hadley will put his tonsils to use to auction off gear, and tickets are being sold.
The money raised will help Professor Rowe’s research.
After Professor Rowe spoke, Dave Perry, the former Manly chief executive and another at the lunch, spoke briefly about the opportunity at hand and how to best utilise this opportunity.
“What do you want out of it, Con?” he asked.
Con smiled and Perry stopped him there.
“No,” he said. “I know you’re going to make a joke of it. Be serious, what do you really want, if we can make it work, what do you really want?”
Again, Con smiled.
“I’d have preferred Parkinson’s,” he said.
For tickets go to mndresearchfundraiser@gmail.com
SHORT SHOT
Wests Tigers’ Covid scare this week is the new reality for the NRL.
For two seasons now the NRL has successfully navigated its way through Covid with strict protocols in place to ensure the game continued, and not one Covid positive was recorded that might threaten the game.
As the NRL looks to return to normality, though, living with Covid will become a part of it.
So far, League Central has tied itself in knots trying to be all things to all people, putting the decision making on clubs
Canterbury took a step forward last Tuesday releasing John Asiata after he refused to get vaccinated.
Where Asiata lands nobody knows. The NRL has different standards to government, which is why there is confusion.
The simple analogy is comparing vaccinations to driver’s licences.
Driver’s licences are required to show you have reached a minimum standard of proficiency so that you are not only safe in regard to your own welfare, but also that you have reached a minimum standard to keep other motorists out of danger.
No amount of rage against government will change the rules on driver’s licences. It doesn’t happen because it makes common sense.
Covid vaccinations should carry the same mentality.
No individual should be forced to get vaccinated, that is their right. But it would also mean non-vaccinated people have failed to reach the minimum level of safety that the community has agreed upon.
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