Former Western Bulldogs president and doctor Tony Capes loses short battle with cancer
FORMER Footscray president and club doctor Tony Capes has died after a short battle with an aggressive form of cancer.
FORMER Footscray president and club doctor Tony Capes has died after a short battle with an aggressive form of cancer.
Capes, 78, was president from 1982 until his shock resignation in April of the 1988 season.
He unsuccessfully sought a position as a part-time league commissioner the following month.
Capes, a respected football administrator and doctor, played a major role in giving Mick Malthouse a career in coaching when he sought his appointment as Footscray coach for the 1984 season when he was then an untried 30 year-old.
He also played a major role in implementing the league’s first illicit drug code
Capes was club doctor when Bulldog Neil Sachse, playing just his second league game, became
a quadriplegic at Whitten Oval on April 12, 1975, when he fell into the path of Fitzroy’s Kevin O’Keeffe.
He told Fox Footy in 2006: “I was holding his hand and he looked up at me and said, ‘Am I going to be all right, Doc’?” “I said, ‘Oh, yeah, you’ll be right, Neil’.
“He said, ‘That’s good, I trust you’. (It was) probably the worst moment I’ve ever had in my life,”
Western Bulldogs president Peter Gordon said last night that the Bulldogs owed a lot to Capes and the club was saddened with the news of his death.
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