Poor bugger had just settled on a new home and spent the day moving in with all the stress that goes with that. 21 July 2008
Died in his bed that night and when he didn't answer calls from work the next day they went round to check on him.
The phrase 'Online Community' is often touted these days without people realising just how reliant we have become on the WWW for our social, professional and even love lives.
Planet Rugby has become a huge online rugby community with its very own identity and thriving and opinionated chat forum, where many rugby fans from around the globe debate the game, their allegiances and virtually everything else about life! Without their contribution and interest, it's a truism to say PR would not exist today in the form we find it.
One of the Veterans of that Chat Forum, and someone that has contributed his garrulous views on almost a daily basis since 1998, posted as Bulldog, who in every day life was an English light-oil trader named Simon Dickson, based out of Houston in Texas.
Sadly, Simon passed away on 21/07/08 aged 48, a heart attack taking a young life and an athletic mind.
He was a rugby fanatic, a Harlequin and England supporter, but more East End geezer than public school toff. His first allegiance was to Buller RFC, who appeared more times in his threads than Auckland or Leicester! His watching history stretched from the mid 70s to date and he had watched England in every major Rugby playing country, including the 2003 Rugby World Cup final that England won, his proudest moment. A lover of fine wine, of beer and life itself, he lived every minute of those 48 years to the fullest.
For us here at Planet Rugby, it's difficult for us to describe his contributions, so we thought it would more appropriate to edit together some of the comments that have literally been flooding in, either via mail or through our forum.
1) My first day on the forum he sent me a personal email welcoming me in.
He knew his rugby all right. When I couldn't remember the name of a "one cap wonder" Welsh hooker, describing the man as a ruddy faced chap, Simon came straight back with his name - Nigel Meek. Encyclopaedic knowledge.
2) Bulldog's first words to me....
When we first met in the LJ (he was in Rio de Janerio to play golf, naturally), he walked in wearing a Lions shirt. Quite a lot of other people were wearing rugby shirts but I just knew it had to be him.
He strolled up to the bar, ordered a pint of Guinness, took a sip and said in his best Estuary English, "Christ, this is p*ss!" and ordered a bottle of Heineken.
3) Last time I saw him was at a head-wetting drinks in the function room upstairs at the Nellie Dean in November 2006, to which he cordially invited not only himself but a couple of his mates, too. The miserable sod talked too loud, smoked too much and abused my hospitality no end: the drinks bill at the end of the evening was huge (although, to be fair, he was not solely responsible for that...).
Mind you, it was difficult to begrudge him, since only hours earlier he had stood my mate and I a lovely lunch in Mayfair.
He was generous to a fault. First time I met him was at the Hole In The Wall (anyone else noticing a theme developing here...?), his favourite boozer in all the world (no surprise, really: it is a dump). I can't remember exactly who was there, but I do know he brought his then wife with him. The event sticks out in my mind for two reasons. First because I somehow contrived to pour an entire pint of vitamin G all over his wife and he didn't even punch me; second because he then took her - soaked through - and me to supper at Bank and wouldn't hear of us paying. You can't argue with that kind of quality.
Garrulous, irascible, scarily loud of voice, often deliberately coarse, deep of pocket and warm of heart, we shouldn't be shocked at his passing: he drank like a fish, smoked like a trooper, had a pretty stressful job, spent too much time on planes and considered exercise to be something for other, less interesting, people.
Although he will leave a large hole in the board and my email will be less busy, personally I shan't mourn the bugger. He would, I believe, be horrified at the thought; so I'll raise a glass of red to him this evening and mark his passing by doubling my resolve to make sure I get to the gym as often as I promise myself I will.
4) It's been almost five years since I caught up with Bulldog a couple of times while he was here for the 2003 world cup, having known each other for a couple of years prior to that on the chat board.
We met for lunch at The Royal Exhibition by Central Station around midday and immediately I had some catching up to do as he'd been on it for a couple of hours already. We hit it off straight away and within a short time the force of his personality had attracted half a dozen others to our table in the beer-garden including several lovely young lasses that Bulldog charmed across from another table, whom he effortlessly passed himself off to as a globe-trotting rugby journalist. (Personally I thought being an wealthy international oil Baron would have been far more impressive, but he was probably bored of the reality.)
For the next 14 hours we drank, smoked and laughed ourselves stupid about anything and everything. His rugby knowledge, at least as far as England was concerned, was impeccable. He crashed at my place, but before he did, found my laptop left on and logged in, as I popped out for a paper. Par for his treasured courses that he managed in that time to leave several acutely embarrassing messages on the PR message board in my name.
He was gone before I woke next morning but we caught up not long after following England's victory. It was difficult to get a sensible word out of him as he'd been on the booze for 24 hours solid. He was one extremely happy Bulldog, a world champion, in perhaps one of the happiest moments of his life.
When I look at some of the recent pictures posted of Simon it's clear he had aged far more than the five years since I last saw him, though it's an incredible shock to have learned of his passing.
Bulldog was a chat room fixture from the earliest days, a prolific poster but one who never took the place seriously. You never saw Bulldog lose his cool, in fact only one post in 20 was more than a short sentence long, most often just a few well chosen words to cheerfully put someone in their place.
He was a stirrer but never a troll, the keenest student of the game but never a preacher, came across as a gruff bastard but in my mind is only his grinning mug from 2003.
I don't know his family or his many friends away from the board, so while my thoughts are with them, it is here on the board where his loss will be felt most acutely for me. His loss to the PR forum cannot be understated. He was just always here, and now he's gone.
5) He laughed at my jokes,
He endured my doting father "my kid is the smartest, funniest, bentest" stories,
He leapt to commiserate,
He pounced on anything stupid,
but, as quick as he was with the one-liner, or emphatic putdown,
He was quicker with the reach for the wallet and the first beer,
He was always there, even when we were not,
He had an enormous heart, which, sadly, was not large enough for his unquenchable appetite for life.
6) I was busy in Deadmonton laughing at Bulldog's attempts to pick up a rather busty ginger burd.
He used the following line as his coup de grace but it didn't quite come off: 'I don't sweat much for a portly fella, dahling.'
7) And now, a word from the man himself.....Bulldog was famed for his wit and full on banter. When every Kiwi in the land bemoaned Newcastle's signing of All Black Legend Carl Hayman, Simon was quick to see the flaw in their argument. Quick as a flash he responded:
"Hayman this, Hayman thaaat. I'm sick of Kiwi hypocrisy. No-one said a word when Ben Gollings was starring in the Air NZ Cup!"
Equally when another poster eulogised about Wales' future, Bulldog was quick to remind him of some of the perceived root courses:
Welsh poster: "Wales have learned from our mistakes, the future is red- we won't make the same mistakes again"
Bulldog: "So you're going to stop picking fat useless blokes then?"
Great banter, all done with tongue firmly in cheek.
8) Lastly, it is without doubt that Bulldog has perpetrated the most successful flounce in the history of Planet Rugby...in fact ever! Leaving us not with "good riddance", or "he was a tosser anyway" or any other negative thoughts, but rather with an empty feeling of "WTF?", "Why", and an empty silence, with that awful notion that there is something left undone, something left unsaid, something left unfinished.
"Larger-than-life" is a term that is overused, and it's currency is often devalued. But in this case, it is the only term we can think of that fits all facets of Bulldog. Bulldog is, was, and always will be larger than life.
In the footsteps of another English great, Martin Johnson, the garrulous, gruff, impossible, lovable, grizzly Pom has left us, and left us as all great athletes should do, at the top of his game, and as the consummate showman leaving his audience wanting one last finale.
RIP Bulldog
You'll be missed.
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