Yahoo Lifestyle Greg and Virginia Hughes: Our son is our hero
Greg and Virginia Hughes opened up to New Idea in 2009 about how proud they were of their then 20-year-old son Phillip. Photo: New Idea
The front door opened as wide as Virginia Hughes’ warm smile on the sunny day in March 2009 when New Idea called to meet the parents of the young man being hailed our next Don Bradman.
Virginia’s 20-year-old son Phillip had just become the youngest player in history to score back-to-back Test centuries and she couldn’t have been more proud.
It was in this modest brick bungalow in Macksville on the NSW mid-north coast – the Colorbond steel fence dented beyond repair and windows broken from the constant onslaught of cricket balls – that Virginia and Greg had bred a superb sportsman.
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Excusing her home, packed to the rafters with sporting trophies, Virginia explained: "We really do need to do a makeover. But all of those dents and broken windows mean something.
"The boys spent every day out here playing cricket, using a recycling bin as stumps, or hitting a ball on a string. Those dents are sentimental."
It’s heartbreaking to think just how sentimental that broken fence and those missing panes of glass must now seem to Virginia and Greg as they remember their boy and come to the realisation he won’t be coming home again.
Those reminders of a lost son, who died last month when a freak bouncer hit him on the neck at the Sydney Cricket Ground causing a rare and fatal haemorrhage, will be almost impossible to make over now.
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