Rye Football Club greats Mick O’Rourke and Alan Barnes die

Rye Football Club is mourning the deaths of two of its most loved and respected figures within days of each other.

Mick O'Rourke was a tireless worker for Rye for most of his life. Picture: Facebook

Mick O’Rourke has been remembered as “one of the great custodians’’ of Rye Football Netball Club after his death on Wednesday following a short battle with cancer.

He was 78.

Rye is also mourning the loss of former champion player and junior club president Alan Barnes, 58, on Friday, also after a battle with cancer.

Both are being remembered as significant figures in the club’s history.

O’Rourke was a rusted-on Rye legend. He played a record 342 games for the club as an uncompromising back flanker who never took a backward step on the ground.

O’Rourke was Rye club president for 22 years between 2002-23, following a 21-year stint as vice-president — and he was still on the club’s general committee this year.

However, “Kicka’’ O’Rourke’s longest achievement of all was his astonishing record of going on 56 club footy trips — a “world record’’ that may never be beaten.

“I’ve never had a bad one,’’ O’Rourke told the Leader newspaper in 2020.

Mick O'Rourke bursts through the banner on his 50th footy trip in 2014. Picture: Supplied

O’Rourke went on his first Rye end-of-season trip — to Albury — in 1965.

“I enjoyed it so much I haven’t missed since,” O’Rourke said.

On the 2014 trip, while watching the AFL grand final at a bar in Adelaide, the Rye boys put on the grey wigs and fake moustaches in honour of “Kicka’’.

Mick thought it was absolutely wonderful and the trip remained a highlight.

Rye stalwart and “Kicka’s” close friend Scott Beel said the great man was revered by all.

“He used to get up in the bus at the start of the trip and make a big speech,” Beel said.

“Basically, he’d tell everyone, ‘when you get back everyone is going to be wanting to know what went on, who did what...but you don’t tell them anything. You’re here to enjoy it’.’’

Beel said O’Rourke, who ran his own plumbing business, was a tireless worker for the club and his local community.

“He was one of a kind, just a champion bloke,’’ Beel said.

“Just everything he did for the footy club, but also the community as well. Nothing was ever a problem. He’d just do it. I used to say to people, ‘I don’t know where Mick finds the time’. He just gets stuff done.

“He had a great saying in life, ‘when you want something done, ask a busy man’. He just got it done.’’

Alan and Charlene Barnes with their sons, Clayton, Justin, Tyson and Mitchell in July, 2024. Picture: Supplied

Barnes was a champion rover for Rye in the 1990s, winning the 1992 Mornington Peninsula league Division 1 best and fairest medal after playing under-19s at North Melbourne under Denis Pagan.

Last year Barnes watched his four sons — Clayton, Mitchell, Justin and Tyson — play in Rye’s senior side, and said it was his proudest moment.

Beel said it was a sad time for the Rye sporting community.

“It’s tough times, mate, but we’ll get through it,’’ he said.