Fundraiser for Simon Dwyer presents fresh hope for medical procedure

SIMON Dwyer already has his first $10,000 spent. He is buying hope to see if a radical medical procedure can bring back life to his arm.

City vs Country

SIMON Dwyer already has his first $10,000 spent.

He is buying hope.

Some time later this month, or the next, heading for the Gold Coast to see if a radical medical procedure, one which has already brought life to the legs of Australian Paralympian John McLean, might do the same for his limp right arm.

Ex Tigers player Simon Dwyer arrives at a Wests Tigers NRL training.

Call it rugby league’s comeback of the year.

One starting overnight when, at a Wests Leagues fundraiser initially capped at 400, a capacity crowd of 577 - including Brad Fittler, Benji Marshall, Beau Ryan and Tim Sheens - squeezed together to raise funds for the ‘Forgotten Man of Rugby League’.

As first revealed by The Daily Telegraph in May, Dwyer hasn’t received a cent in the three years since tearing five nerves from his spinal cord while attempting a tackle.

Try scored by Simon Dwyer.

Despite being dubbed a future NSW Origin forward, he had no contact from the NRL.

Nor the Rugby League Players Association.

Even Wests Tigers, where he is employed as a video analyst, are still unable to guarantee his future beyond October.

And still he was reluctant to be interviewed.

Same deal when Fittler, who every year has the 25-year-old on his City Origin staff, suggested they organise a tribute dinner.

Simon Dwyer, former NRL player at home in Macquarie Fields.

“I thought everyone had probably forgotten me,’’ Dwyer told us on Friday night.

“My fear was showing up and being the only one here.”

Instead, he arrived to a packed house.

And if you can put aside for a minute the fact this even needed to happen, or that the $200,000 organisers hope to raise is exactly what his contract payout should have been - and would be today under the new Collective Bargaining Agreement - you still arrive at a story of hope.

Understanding how for 10 large, Dwyer can possibly undergo the same program another injured footballer labels his “miracle”.

Injured Wests Tigers NRL player Simon Dwyer in the gym at Concord Oval.

Once a promising leaguie with the Penrith Panthers, McLean was 22, and on a training ride along the M4, when an eight tonne truck hit his pushbike from behind - breaking his back, pelvis, right arm, ribs, fracturing his sternum, puncturing his lung and rendering him a paraplegic.

In the years since, this gritty Sydneysider has swum the English Channel, won a Paralympic silver medal in rowing, even become the first wheelchair athlete to complete the Hawaiian Ironman.

Then last year ... well, he walked.

Simon Dwyer at an autograph session in Dubbo.

After extensive work with Queensland sports therapist Ken Ware, whose ‘tremor process’ sends affected areas into spasm, the Paralympian took his first unaided steps after 25 years in a wheelchair.

Now Dwyer hopes it might be his saviour too.

Reminded that he has also become something of a poster boy for the NRL insurance debate, he replies softly: “Poster boy? Nah, not at all.

“Yes, I really do hope things change for the guys playing now. But, for me, I just want to get my arm back.

“And wether this tremor therapy up on the Gold Coast works, who knows? But I have to believe. I have to hope.”

Originally published as Fundraiser for Simon Dwyer presents fresh hope for medical procedure