By RUSSELL BENNETT
STEVE Goodie has been involved as a player, coach or administrator in many local football leagues.
Now he’s hoping to reach them all with his crucial, potentially life-saving melanoma message.
Goodie, now 47, has played more than 400 games across stints at Gembrook-Cockatoo and Upwey-Tecoma in the AFL Yarra Ranges competition, EFL powerhouse Vermont, Cora Lynn and ROC; and also held numerous coaching roles and served as the Brookers’ president for 10 years.
His family’s battle extends far beyond any footy field or netball court, but the local sporting community is the perfect vessel to spread its message.
Steve’s wife Carolyn, or ‘Caz’ as she was known by most, was the sort of person who makes sporting clubs tick and its people gravitate towards her.
When she lost her battle with melanoma last June aged just 45, the impact was felt throughout the local community.
While Steve was the long-time figurehead, or front-man of the Brookers, Caz was doing all the tireless work behind the scenes to keep the club moving and did so until just a few short months before she lost her battle – leaving behind Steve, and daughters Alex and Chloe, now 17 and 16.
The past year has been full of peaks and troughs that the Goodie family has navigated together with their close friends and family, and now they’re moving forward with a message that they hope will save lives.
Saturday, August 13 – Round 17 of the AFL Yarra Ranges season – has been renamed ‘Carolyn Goodie Melanoma Cancer Awareness Round’ and every senior football and netball team across the competition’s two divisions are playing their part to shine a spotlight on the deadly disease.
The fact is Australia has the highest rate of melanoma anywhere in the world.
On average, 30 Australians are diagnosed every day; and close to 1700 will die from it each year – more than the national road toll.
The public battle currently being fought by Hawthorn superstar Jarryd Roughead made front page news across the country; but for so many people who haven’t yet been directly touched by the disease, it’s all-too-often a case of out of sight, out of mind.
“Carolyn had her first melanoma removed 18 years ago, when she was in her late twenties,” Steve said.
“She then had another one removed in 2012. The cancer just popped up – they don’t know why.
“It’s more than a mole. That’s cancerous, but it’s more the secondary cancers that it can cause. For example Jarryd Roughead had a melanoma removed from his lip, but the cancer spread to his lung.
“Look – this isn’t about Caz. It’s about awareness for other people.
“I’ve been involved in footy for 30 years and this is my platform. This is the only way I know how to spread the message, through footy and netball circles.
“Who was Carolyn Goodie? She was the girl next door. She was the mother, the daughter, the person who just happened to marry a football-head. She didn’t have a big name but she was someone who was unlucky enough to marry a footballer and be involved in the community all her life. This really can happen to anyone.”
On 13 August, footballers and netballers across the Yarra Ranges competition will wear blue and yellow armbands – the colours associated with Melanoma Institute Australia.
There will also be a fund-raiser, including an auction featuring signed guernseys from the Geelong, Richmond, Essendon, North Melbourne and Adelaide AFL sides.
But mainly, it’s about awareness.
Through the Cancer Council, Steve has hundreds of flyers and posters of mole photos that he’s hoping to have distributed to trainers’ rooms in clubs throughout the hills and – hopefully – clubs throughout the south-east.
“If a trainer can say ‘there’s a mole on your back, go and see someone’, it puts it in the players’ minds,” Steve said.
Cora Lynn player-coach David Main and his wife, Emily, great friends and neighbours of the Goodies, wanted to have a fund-raising night for the family in the months leading up to Carolyn’s passing.
“We didn’t want it at first, but Caz agreed in the end as long as half of it went to research,” Steve said.
“When we left the fund-raiser, I said, ‘Isn’t it great that we’ve raised enough money to get something – some equipment or whatever – that might help you?’ and she said ‘Steve, it’s not about me. It’s about the next person’.
“I was just overwhelmed by that, and it’s probably those words that’ve pushed me into this.
“The thing is, the ages of 18 to 30 are the ages that people – both male and female – don’t really care. We all think we’re bulletproof.
“Caz had her first melanoma removed and then had constant checks every year; then two years, then five years.
“She came to me in the November of 2014 and said she had a little lump on her side. She booked in for an appointment, and six weeks later she was on a hospital bed having blood transfusions and hoping that the tablets she was on would work otherwise she’d die. That’s how quick it can be.
“When I saw the surgeon, he said it was the worst case he’d ever seen – it was a bushfire throughout her body.
“You’ll never truly understand how it feels until it’s happened to your family.”
A year on, and Steve and the girls aren’t as grief-stricken over Caz anymore, but she’s always in their hearts.
“I’m lucky,” he said.
“We had 23 great years together and I’ve got all those memories. I can sit and talk about her for hours – that’s the reality for me.
“I’m biased, I know, but no-one ever said a bad word about Caz. Ever.”
Steve, who won seven premierships as a player, had just signed on as the new coach of SFL outfit the Sandown Cobras in 2014 when he had to step down due to Caz’s battle.
But footy remains a crucial part of his life – now as an umpire.
“I’d be lost without footy,” he said.
“It’s my outlet now through umpiring because I can’t commit to a club anymore. I go with Chloe and we umpire and Alex plays netball, so the sport that we belong to is still helping me. Otherwise I’d be lost on a Saturday doing nothing. Footy helps me to deal with my process.”
The Gembrook Cockatoo Football and Netball Club will hold an event on 13 August during its clash against Alexandra to remember one of the great community-minded people, Carolyn Goodie.
Anyone who wishes to donate to the fight against melanoma can contact the Eastern Skin Cancer Clinic at www.easternskincc.com.au.
