A doctor once told cycling legend Lance Armstrong he had seen some terrible people beat cancer and the best succumb to the disease.
Jim Stynes was only 45 when he died on Tuesday morning with wife Sam and children Matisse and Tiernan by his side, after a near three-year battle with brain cancer.
Don McLardy, who succeeded Stynes as president of AFL club Melbourne early this year, recounted an anecdote on Tuesday he felt best encapsulated a man universally admired and loved in AFL circles and beyond.
“He once told me that having cancer was a privilege,” McLardy said.
“He said he had worked with many young people who had been in life-threatening situations, and he never really knew how they felt.
“He believed having cancer would help him understand what those young people were experiencing, and make him a much better person to help them.
“Cancer a privilege – it takes a special person to consider that.”
Armstrong was one of many people to quickly pass on his condolences via Twitter.
“RIP Jim Stynes. We’ll miss you mate,” said the American, who won the Tour de France a record seven years in a row after surviving testicular cancer.
The Dublin-born Stynes packed plenty into an astonishing life that ended far too early.
After creating one of the most remarkable stories in Australian sporting history, he became a renowned youth worker.
Then he stepped up to become the figurehead of his beloved Melbourne football club’s fightback from near-AFL oblivion, taking over as chairman in mid-2008, a year before being diagnosed with the illness.
Stynes fought cancer the same way he played football – with admirable courage and a fierce determination, regardless of what was coming at him.
The Dubliner was 18 when he answered a newspaper advertisement placed by the Demons as part of their famous “Irish experiment”.
Melbourne wanted to see if they could recruit talented Gaelic footballers and turn them into Australian Rules players.
Stynes was by far the most successful graduate of this left-field scheme.
The Demons liked him because he was athletic and he would stay behind after training to practise further with the oval ball.
He came to Australia in late 1984 and after a tough apprenticeship, the ruckman made his senior debut in 1987.
But Stynes’ lack of AFL experience cost him horribly at the end of the 1987 preliminary final, when he ran across the mark and gave away a crucial 15m penalty in the dying seconds.
That put Hawthorn’s Gary Buckenara within scoring range and he kicked the winning goal.
One of the most famous photos in AFL history shows a seething Melbourne coach John Northey in the changerooms post-match.
Northey is clearly delivering some choice words to Stynes who is a blurred figure in the foreground of the photo, his head bowed.
A few weeks later, during a holiday in Europe, a stranger asked Stynes in France if he was the bloke who had run across the mark.
How Stynes reacted to that epic blunder was an early sign of his immense character.
A year later, he played in Melbourne’s losing grand final side.
In 1991, Stynes won the AFL’s highest individual honour, the Brownlow Medal.
He remains the only player brought up outside Australia to win the medal.
By the time he won the Brownlow, Stynes was also well into his remarkable streak of 244 consecutive games, an AFL record.
That nearly ended in 1993 when Stynes suffered a serious rib injury, which was supposed to put him out for several weeks.
After treatment, Stynes insisted he was available to play and so the Demons put him through a brutal fitness test that included several team-mates.
Among them was Rod Grinter, then one of the game’s most feared players.
The session ended in blows, but Stynes played.
The streak eventually ended in 1998 and Stynes retired at the end of that season after 264 games.
He equalled the club record for the most best and fairest awards with four, including three-straight from 1995-97.
Stynes was a two-time All-Australian who was named in Melbourne’s team of the century.
He played 10 games for Victoria and represented Australia and Ireland in International Rules.
The Jim Stynes Medal is awarded to the best Australian player in the International Rules series.
Stynes was inducted into the AFL Hall Of Fame in 2003.
In 1994, he co-founded the Reach Foundation, an organisation that aims to help young people aged 10-18, regardless of their circumstances.
Stynes was a self-confessed wild child and said sport was the only part of his youth that gave him a release.
He was twice named Victorian of the year for his social work and was made a Member of the Order of Australia in 2007.
In early July 2009, Jim and Sam Stynes fronted a packed media conference at the MCG to confirm rumours he had cancer.
Stynes had a particularly nasty form of the disease and he was initially given only nine months to live.
But he stayed on as Melbourne chairman until early 2012, with the club having endured a remarkable off-field turn-around under his stewardship.
Stynes used Twitter to give updates on his battle with the disease, but the extent of his fight was laid bare in September 2010.
Jules Lund, one of his best friends, helped produce a television documentary on Stynes.
It showed Stynes going to the extremes of drinking his own urine and having coffee enemas to help combat the cancer.
Sam Stynes wrote on her Facebook page that her husband was “pain-free, dignified and peaceful” when he died on Tuesday morning with his family by his side.
“Not surprisingly, in his last week of life Jim continued to defy the odds and lived his life to the fullest attending the Melbourne vs. Hawthorn football match, his son Tiernan’s 7th Birthday celebration, The MFC Blazer Ceremony and a casual Friday night dinner at Topolinos in his much loved suburb St Kilda,” she said.
“In his final days Jim was immersed with insurmountable love and tenderness surrounded by his family and some close friends in the comfort of his own home.
“On behalf of Jim my heartfelt thanks to all those who have so generously cared for, guided and supported Jim throughout his challenging cancer battle.”
