Dean Upton knows more than anyone what high regard his grandfather, Neil Upton (pictured below), is held at the Maroochydore Roos.
You need only look at the scoreboard and see the giant words of Neil Upton Oval emblazened across the top.
In his 35 years at the Roos, Upton held almost every role at the club and is estimated to have strapped 18,000 ankles and used 45km in strapping tape.
There's even stories of Upton painstakingly mowing the club's old home ground at Wises Rd (now the IGA Marketplace) with a common household lawnmower because the ground was too soggy for a tractor to get on.
The 82-year-old was one of the inaugural inductees in the Sunshine Coast AFL Hall of Fame was one of eight Hall of Fame members to be bestowed with “Legend” status.
The guy is a legend around the place.
Sadly, he succumbed to cancer in 2010.
However, for those final years the Roos were lucky enough to also have the services of Dean to help strap those ankles.
Like his grandfather, he was down the club for every training session and every match, strapping ankles and shoulders and doing whatever he could to help prepare the players for battle.
A lack of work opportunities on the Coast resulted in Dean relocating to sunny Hamilton Island for the past 4 years.
But Dean is now back on the Coast and his first stop when he returned was to stroll down to training and ask if there was anyway he could help for the season ahead.
Roos President, Matt Bury, who was a senior player at the club when Dean and his grandfather were last strapping ankles together was quick to take him up on the offer.
"Footy clubs can never have too many volunteers but to have someone like Dean who lives and breathes the footy club like his grandfather did is a tremedous gain for us."
Last Modified on 16/12/2014 10:21