Richmond premiership player Merv Keane has returned to Wycheproof as an ambassador for the Melbourne Cup tour. He reconnected with the town since the tragic death of his daughter Emily and wife Kaye.
He drove down the main street, alongside the railway line, stopped at the bakery, and when he stepped out into the country air, it was like he had never been away.Credit:It didn’t matter that he had become a triple premiership player at Richmond, or later an assistant coach at Essendon under Kevin Sheedy, or an AFL life member. To the locals, he was still just “Merv”.Jay Town/VRC
Keane’s reconnection with the town of his youth after a “40-year hiatus” led to him becoming the Cup ambassador.He re-established a friendship with Kevin Thompson, a local real estate agent who is also president of the Mt Wycheproof & District Racing Club, and was thrust into the role by local Jackie Noonan, who is also a member of the race club committee.
It was the sort of devastation that would stop most people in their tracks. But it is what Keane did next that truly set him apart. When asked about growing up in Wycheproof the second eldest of eight, Keane says he was a boy who hunted rabbits and caught yabbies. A boy who could recite the names of premiership teams and premiership players and all the Melbourne Cup winners. A boy who wasn’t “much good” at school except for grammar.
“I wasn’t the only one affected by the funeral,” Keane recalls. “We just heard the most amazing story about this guy, who was a nobody really in the world. Unknown in the world. Just the tales and the stories and the brilliance of this guy. “I really revisited his whole life,” Keane says. “What I did in writing the book, I followed him around the world when I worked out where he’d been.”, was launched in Abbotsford on September 12, 2019 – the fifth anniversary of Field’s death.
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