Around the Traps: My past 18 months away from rugby
By MARK CASHMAN
I’ve been an infrequent contributor on the Rugby News platform these past 18 months.
Many of you must have been wondering what had happened to “old Norths mate on that podcast” and his pithy and insightful copy.
Had he got a better offer, come a cropper somewhere, won Lotto or whether some of that generational wealth had finally flowed through.
Let’s be honest and with due respect to the gaffer Sam Ryan, I was never going to make a fortune, not even a small fortune, stringing a few words together about the Shute Shield on their platform.
But I’ve always loved telling the good stories about the people in and around clubland, most off them there for the right reasons.
Not a bad side hustle as I juggled life, being Sports Editor at the Daily Telegraph in the 1990s, starting up Inside Rugby magazine at what was then called ACP Magazines and producing what to my mind are still the best Test match programs in the rugby world.
But life as we knew it was tipped on its head a little over 18 months ago when my wife Toni started showing some worrying symptoms.
It would take many months to get to the bottom of what was going on, but we braced for the worst and hoped for the best.
For those that didn’t know Toni had a rare and fatal degenerative brain disorder called Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease or CJD.
The chances of getting it are more than one in a million, it’s a bit like the long goodbye of dementia on fast, fast forward coupled with a loss of mobility.
It’s bloody brutal, cruel even.
I will always remember sitting in the office of our neurologist Professor Neil Simon when we finally got the diagnosis in February of 2025.
I asked Professor Simon how this CJD thing stumped up against the Motor Neurone Disease that AFL great Neil Daniher is living with.
Daniher had said he was in a daily battle with the “beast” that was MND.
“Got it covered seven days a week, 52 weeks of the year,” was the distilled version of what Professor Simon said
There is no cure, there is no treatment, there is just care.
And so we gave it a go.
Gave it a go with the help of Hammond Care Palliative Care Unit, Sydney Home Nursing and RSL Lifecare.
Family, Toni’s wonderful colleagues at Harbord Public School along with our circle of friends all played a role in making sure the care that Toni was getting was the best it could be.
Throw into that mix the rugby community that has always been part of our life.
The early indicators were there – one of our first dates was to a Sydney v Country fixture at TG Millner in the early 1970s and while the outing with Toni was great I was thrilled to meet former Wallaby prop Roy Prosser.
Little wonder that I ended up at Northern Suburbs and when you clock up more than 300 games of senior footy at a club like that you get to know a wide range of personalities.
Most, but not all, have managed to stay out of the “Big House” but they have all been good company and fruity subjects for over dinner discussions.
Many are still in our lives, many I still look up to and many have touched the “Cashmen” with their generosity and genuine care.
Not long after Toni’s diagnosis I got an email from our Norths WhatsApp group to say that a voucher for a significant amount at a very good ready-made dinner supplier called Dinner Ladies was attached.
It was simple, sensible and hit the spot much like many of the game plans we yearned for back in the day.
Tears flowed once again.
There has been great advice too from the rugby crew about negotiating what lies ahead in the coming days, months and seasons.
Grief counselling is something on the to do list at some stage soon but the routine of having a presence at North Sydney Oval on a Saturday afternoon will be part of what is our “new normal”.
Watching the Shoremen win in 2025 on Stan Sport would always give the spirits a bit of a lift and seeing the next generation blossom was great.
That will be a part of the weekend routine in 2026 and I am sure telling the stories of the Shute Shield will be cathartic.
The detail of what lies ahead might seem scary at the moment but I’m looking forward to whatever that is.