Update: John's funeral service is on Funeral Friday 21st at St Martha’s Strathfield
There's been some giants of our Club; people who have contributed in so many different ways and helped make the Club stronger - none more so than John Cullen who we lost today at 95 years of age
Ist grade player, Captain, Coach, then Committee Member, Sponsor, Life Member. One of the original band who laboured to help clear 146 Vimiera Rd, John epitomized everything that the Woods stand for. But he wasn't stuck in the past; one of the earliest and strongest supporters of our relocation, when he walked around the new ground and saw the possibilities his eyes lit up, but he did say he was probably a bit too old now to get on the end of a shovel. For John, it was always about the Football Club first
John and the Cullen family were fixtures at our games over decades and decades
John sadly has not been well for a little while and he died this afternoon peacefully at home with his family around him and an Eastwood footy jumper on his bedroom wall.
Its a cliche to say it but its true, he will not be forgotten by a grateful Club that he served with such distinction for so many years
Sad but inevitable news, I certainly remember watching Johnny Cullen play as per that top left photo, when I, Bob Gamble, Joe Newsome's nephew, attended Eastwood Oval as a youngster with my father, as Joe was married to Reg Gamble's sister, Marie, one of the original blue and white Woodies Girls providing tea up at Eastwood Oval, and of course all with John, bringing to reality the dream of Eastwood Rugby owning their own patch, now preserved as TG Millner Field.
John is just the 15th name on the honour board gracing the wall at the TG Millner club house, Joe at the top as No. 1 of course, but John may be amongst those Woodies lads in the 1951…