Jockey William Pike is known, of course, in the Australian way, as “Pikey”, but also as “The Wizard” for his ability to extract maximum performance from any given steed at any given track.
And while the great-great-grandson of Jim Pike – who won 27 of 30 races aboard mighty Phar Lap, including two WS Cox Plates and the 1930 Melbourne Cup – is based in Perth, W.Pike is long established as a favourite, even cult hero, among eastern state punters for his propensity to win races in his timezone, that being following the last in Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane.
Mugs everywhere will tell you, hand on heart: Pikey’s a special in the Out of Jail Stakes. They even have a saying for it: “Back Pike, drink what you like.”
One of those punters was, more often than not, my mate from golf, Anthony “Digs” Dignan. Most Saturday afternoons at Long Reef GC, Digs would rustle whatever cash money had been won-and-lost by his four-ball, take it to the TAB machine and invest it upon whatever animal Pike was riding next up in the west.
“C’mon, Pikey, get him home,” Digs would urge, sometimes followed by raucous affirmation of punting expertise. At other times (most times, if we’re honest) there was chagrin and piss-takery … closely followed by a scan of the form to see what Pike was on next.
It was harmless, man-boy stuff. We bonded over it. It was just dumb fun.
And now he’s gone and we’re all a bit shocked and shook. So quick was his passing that some of us barely knew he was crook, much less how crook.
Middle of March he’d come back from a conference in Miami and, in a very Digs way, played golf the Saturday he landed. He blamed jetlag for his minus-six in the five-club par comp. But, afterwards, when he couldn’t keep a beer down, he took off home. Digs must be crook, it was agreed.
Subsequent diagnoses of stomach cancer weren’t great. But these days, right? Chemo, radiation, stem cell what-have-you? You can fight it. Yet this one was virulent. It spread from bowel to bones to brain. He lost feeling in his fingers. He’d barely begun treatment. Didn’t get a chance. And on Friday we got the news. And it shook our crew, as you can imagine it would.
Fair old memory at the par-3 second hold for our Digs. PHOTO: Greg Black
Digger was all of us. He was a kid from the ‘70s and ‘80s for whom recreation meant cricket or footy, with golf like an adjunct, muck-a-round sport. BMX riding was just how you got around. And you had to pedal to propel yourself.
If you had 20 cents you’d play Galaga at the Milk Bar. A phone was a rotary dial-up stuck to the wall in your kitchen. You didn’t really need it anyway; you already knew where your mates would be after school. And after scoffing a Vegemite sandwich made from thin-sliced Tip-Top white, and with chocolate milk dribbling down your chin, you’d pedal quick as you could to the park for a hit or a kick. And you would do that every single day.
For Digs, it begat a life in sport, the life of an Australian sportsman, a man of sport.
He was good enough to play for Sydney Swans U/19s. He played firsts for Manly and North Sydney in Sydney’s super-strong grade cricket competition. He faced Glenn McGrath, Mike Whitney, Doug Bollinger. He kept wickets behind Adam Gilchrist. He played with Michael Bevan and Stuart MacGill. He had a season with the evocatively-named Church and Oswaldtwistle in the Lancashire Cricket League.
For a decade he was a PE Teacher at St Augustine’s College in Brookvale. Norths’ players still talk of the time Digs borrowed the private school’s mini-bus to take his team for a special Thursday night cricket practice at the Canterbury night races.
He was employed by the AFL to manage competitions in NSW. He was general manager of the ACTAFL and western Sydney’s East Coast Eagles. He managed our golf club at Long Reef, and clubs at Portsea, North Ryde and Wyong.
I knew most of this stuff, as golf mates do. That’s what we were to each other: mates from golf. We didn’t ring each other. I don’t know what he did outside golf. I never knew his wife’s name or his kids’ names. I don’t know what he liked to watch on Netflix. It was the same for he about me. We weren’t close like that. We were golf-close. Golf mates. It was cool. It was enough.
I did know his handicap. I did know of his passion for Richmond Tigers. You didn’t have to know Jimmy Jess from Jessica Alba to know that Digs was crazy-bit for the Tiges. He’d been to 20 grand finals at the MCG.
I know he called spades bloody shovels. We didn’t always agree. I’ve preferenced Teals and Greens. He reckon they were hippies and fools. He was strident of opinion. We were never not mates because of it.
Our mateship, as it was for most of us at the club, was what it was – comfortable, fun, relaxed. We’d bond over four-putts and hooks OB on 17, and whatever else cost you a jug in the way of these things. Again – it was enough.
A birdie on the first celebrated with a shot on the second. PHOTO: Greg Black
One day we’ll think of some Cup or Digger Day or something to honour the man as we do another mate, Bobby Nicholls, whom the bastard dancer also claimed too soon. Too early to work out yet. We’ll do something.
When we got the news on Friday, it was like, what do you do? Our answer was what we’ve always done: go down the club, drink a beer, shake your head, do your best. We did it again on Saturday. Shook hands, shook heads, clinked glasses.
And we backed Pikey in the west.
His first ride, Fat Roy Slim, ran second. Another one, the short-priced Pond Master, also ran second. The $5.50 shot, meanwhile, Snippy Jean, may still be running somewhere out there, headless and hopeless, in the back paddocks of Belmont.
Good times at Wentworth Park. PHOTO: David “Bumper” Farrell.
But then, in race five, our long table of knowledge, and outwards through the club and internet chat group, were exultant when Mr Pike piloted Too Darn Stormy, a two-year-old bay gelding in its first ever race, to victory in the Unite Resourcing Plate over 1200m.
It had been too darn stormy to play golf. Didn’t stop us thinking that our man Digs would’ve been all over the $2.50 favourite, and greatly enjoyed the man-fun writ-large.
And we raised glasses again. Sad for our mate and his people. For he was a good bloke, our Digs.
Vale, old mate.
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