By Mark Cashman

If you were around the Shute Shield in the late 1970s and early 1980s you’d have laughed along with Northern Suburbs lower grade winger Mick Colman who passed away last weekend.

Colman was Norths' club captain at that time and his sharp wit informed and entertained many on and off the field, while his after match speeches were legendary - works of art in timing and reading the room.

No one was safe and it wasn’t unusual for fans to travel from other games just to hear Colman’s take on the game just played and the world at large.

Colman was a groomsman at my wedding some 40-plus years ago and it’s fair enough to say that the speeches were one of a number of highlights of the evening at the Roseville Golf Club.

He was one of those self deprecating types that were just great fun to be around.

At Norths, we always knew him by his nickname ‘Splinters’, that one acquired because he spent time on the bench for a fourth grade side that would go on to win the premiership in 1978.

His sense of fun was underlined by the sing-along song that he composed about a Norths' club mate Rene Leveaux trying to break into fourth grade after a 100-game playing career in fives.

Sung to the tune of the French national anthem, La Marseillaise, it had some killer lines including: “He’d sit on the bench before fourth grade commenced. Saying give me a go I am Rene Leveaux.”

And of course the classic lyric: “On Friday drank no beer!”

Colman, 68, passed away with his wife Linda and three children around him in Brisbane after a lengthy health battle with a rare lung disease.

He wasn’t a smoker but as the end neared it took its toll and it was a brutal last couple of months.

Colman had a memorable 47-year career as journalist, the final 23 as a columnist for The Courier-Mail and Sunday Mail after he moved to Brisbane following successful stints with Sydney’s North Shore Times where we first crossed paths, the Sunday Telegraph, the Sun and Sun-Herald.

Highly-respected News Limited cricket correspondent Robert ‘Crash’ Craddock believed he was one of the most entertaining sports columnists of his generation.

“Cheeky, clever and proudly irreverent, Colman was one of a kind, that rare breed of piss-taking sports columnists who could made you choke on your croissant or laugh out loud,” Craddock wrote earlier this week.

“There were many readers who didn’t even love sport but loved reading Colman.

“If you saw – as you often did – someone giggling as they read the back half of the paper on a bus or train you never had to check the author. Colman had struck again.”

He never boasted about it but he also won a Walkley Award for a feature about World War II navigator Cliff Hopgood, who died when his Lancaster bomber was shot down over France.

The story triggered by a visit to a park with his young family and noticing a plaque on a rock saluting his memory.

Colman was fascinated by the story and would go on to write a book called 'Crew', detailing the lives of everyone on board.

It was among a library of books that he wrote, including a best seller with Fatty Vautin and a nicely crafted tome about Eddie Jones.

It’s just not going to be the same without him. Vale ‘Splinters’.