'One of us': Gawn's message for Arrow following MND revelation
Melbourne captain Max Gawn says retired NRL star Jai Arrow is now “one of us”, following his shocking diagnosis with motor neuron disease (MND).
Gawn and the Demons have been a big part of Neale Daniher’s FightMND campaign for the last 13 years, and on Monday will once again take on Collingwood in the FreezeMND match at the MCG.
Jai Arrow recently retired after being diagnosed with MND. Getty
Daniher died in May after a 13-year battle with the disease, but raised millions of dollars to help find a cure and build awareness.
Only a week prior, Arrow revealed his own diagnosis, which has forced him to retire from the NRL at just 30.
“I have seen the news. Unfortunately, any sort of news around MND is never good,” Gawn told Nine.com.au.
“And when you see the headline, ‘NRL player retires due to MND diagnosis’, and then you hear the speech that’s already gone away, you just go back to the work that Neale’s done and how important it is … I heard Garry Lyon speak during the week. One of Neale’s quotes was “fight on”. Now it’s our chance to fight on.
“We all thought, ‘what’s going to happen when Neale’s no longer with us? What’s going to happen to FightMND? What’s going to happen to the Big Freeze’? But what’s going to happen is we’re going to keep it going.
“We have to, because that was the message that got sold to us by a guy who beat a life expectancy by 10 years. And now we’ve got another guy (Arrow) who’s not in the AFL, but in Australian sport, so you feel like he’s one of us that’s now suffering from the disease and it’s another chance to get behind someone in need.”
Late AFL great Neale Daniher will be farewelled at a state funeral in Melbourne on June 10. 9News
West Australian football legend Bryan Cousins, the father of Brownlow Medallist Ben Cousins, revealed over the weekend that he has been battling MND for the last year as well.
Gawn, speaking in the days following Daniher’s passing, said he quickly went through many stages of grief when he was told of the news.
”It’s been an interesting couple of days. Still definitely in a bit of grief and what comes with that,” Gawn said.
“I mean the first day I was definitely thinking about the last time I saw him and could I have given him another hug. When you have him for 12 years and he’s beaten the life expectancy of the disease by 10 years, you just think he’s going to be around forever so you sort of take it for granted that he’s there. So those were my initial thoughts.
“I thought ‘could I have seen him more and done more?’ Then I went into it because everyone was posting all sorts of inspirational videos of him talking to us and Collingwood and his speeches and so I started to get inspired and I started to get like, ‘jeez, how good was this guy? I can’t wait to honour him’.”
Gawn has taken on a bigger role in helping the FightMND campaign in 2026, teaming up with McCain at the MCG on Monday to help raise money.
“Not only can you grab a beanie for the FightMND organisation, which is great. It’s a bit of a baby blue colour this year, but there’s also a chance if you’re at the ’G, which I’m hoping there’s 100,000 or just under, you can go get yourself a cup of McCain chips, and a dollar from every chip box goes to FightMND,” Gawn said.
Max Gawn with his FightMND beanie and a bucket of McCain chips Supplied
“Hopefully that’s a hundred thousand dollars that McCain will be donating to FightMND. And then I mean I know my kids will be having double, so that could be two hundred thousand dollars if there’d be people getting two serves.
“And if you can’t do that, I’m at Fed Square on June 2 in a chip truck. Same concept, money getting raised to FightMND. And if you can’t do that, you can go to Coles and just get a bag of McCain chips and 10 cents goes to FightMND. So that’s our job now. Our job’s to raise as much money as we can.”
Melbourne will be hoping to bounce back from successive losses to GWS and the Western Bulldogs respectively when they take on Collingwood on King’s Birthday Monday.
Collingwood meanwhile lost to the Dogs on Saturday night and find themselves sitting outside the top 10.
