Connor Hogan was diagnosed with schizophrenia, anxiety, and depression in 2019... and in December 2022, he tragically took his own life. Since that moment, Connor's mates have honoured who Connor was, by bringing people together to raise money and awareness for schizophrenia research. What struck me most about this conversation was the amount of love I could see in these blokes eyes. It was clear that Connor was a special person and it was obvious that he continued to live on in their thoughts. Schizophrenia is a mental disorder characterised by a disconnection from reality, which affects how a person thinks, feels and behaves... and in the research I did before this episode, I was almost intimidated by the disease and how it takes hold of the people it affects. The way the boys described the impact it had on Connor, it reminded me of one reason why suicide feels like a taboo subject... because it's bloody confronting. But these conversations... these fellas sharing their stories and honouring their mates legacy... they're shaping the conversation around schizophrenia and they're giving people a blueprint they so wish they had. They're giving people a perspective they wish Connor had. This is a powerful conversation about loss, love, resilience, and creating a future with zero blue-collar suicides.

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Matt Breen: Luke, Harry, Christian, thanks for coming in, fellas, from the Crusade for Connor.

We’ll focus on the Crusade later, but I’d like to linger a little bit on the man behind the mission, Connor. Like I said, we did a bit of research on you guys beforehand. We came across an ABC interview, and your words looped together amongst a few questions.

Connor was diagnosed with schizophrenia, depression and anxiety in 2019. In December 2022, he tragically took his life.

In that interview, Luke, you said Connor was an amazing person, a close mate to so many of us. He had a great passion for nature. He loved sport, music, and he was exceptionally good at all of those things.

Luke: Yeah. I’ve met very few people like him, where everyone liked him and he wasn’t trying to either, which was the amazing part.

I think for all of us, he connected with us in different ways. Footy with these boys, and me through music and playing sport in primary school and that sort of thing. He just fit into every crowd for a different reason. He wasn’t trying to be the cool guy or the popular guy. He was just trying to be mates with everyone.

I think that’s something people resonated with, and that’s why the Crusade for Connor has been such a big event and mission. It’s a support for us, but also so many people loved Connor and just wanted to get around him.

The fact that we’ve had so many people come out to our walks, support us and donate is a really good sign of the kind of person Connor was, and really what started this whole campaign as well.

Matt: Yeah. Who was he to you, Harry?

Harry: As Luke said, I think in discussions over the years, a good way it’s been put was that every bloke wanted to be his friend and every girl wanted to be his girlfriend. He just had that aura about him.

He was a very, very close mate through junior footy, and he was a best friend to everyone in our friend group really, all through high school. Then the years after that, when mental illness came in and he had his struggles, stuff got hard for him. It was hard to see what happened.

But deep down, he was always really sweet-natured. Always nice to everyone, right up to the end, despite anything he was struggling with.

Matt: Do you guys remember the moment he was diagnosed with schizophrenia and the other mental conditions?

Luke: I didn’t find out until he told me, probably a couple of years after. It just came up. We were playing basketball and he told me in the car.

But we saw the signs around year 12, so we were about 17 or 18. Just little things. He started to grow his hair out. He’d leave parties early and that sort of stuff. We noticed signs early, but I don’t think he really felt confident to tell people. At least he didn’t tell me for a little while.

That was a tricky part of it, just seeing him change and not knowing if it was just us being teenagers or whatever it was. Then as soon as we had that less structured contact point, going from high school into the adult world, when we couldn’t see him as often, there were often big changes between every time you saw him.

It wasn’t until he was confident reaching out to us and saying what was going on that we found out.

Matt: How did that discussion go when you were at basketball?

Luke: It was good. It didn’t come as a surprise necessarily. Like I said, we expected something was happening.

I remember we finished up and we were sitting in the car, and we spoke for about an hour and a half about it. I had no idea what schizophrenia was, and he just told me what he was experiencing.

It definitely opened my eyes up a little bit to what it could mean and what he was experiencing. We just see the outside of what we are told from him and our interactions. But it was interesting and heartbreaking to hear what it’s like on the inside for him.

He was struggling.

Matt: What was it like for him? How did he describe it?

Luke: The key things I remember him telling me about were the hallucination side of things, especially the auditory hallucinations.

I remember him saying that he would hear a lot of his close mates. He asked, “Do you hear me telling you anything?”

He said, “Yeah, I hear you in my head telling me that I’m not a good person and I’ve done things wrong.”

It really made me feel like I didn’t know what to do, because I could tell him something to his face, but then he might think I said something different behind closed doors. Those were the big things, the auditory hallucinations.

Matt: Yeah. It’s probably worth just zooming out a tiny bit and defining schizophrenia. It’s a mental disorder characterised by a disconnection from reality, which affects how a person thinks, feels and behaves.

It emerges in adolescence and young adulthood, and affects approximately one in 100 people.

When I was doing a bit of research for this, I came across a few videos of people with lived experience of schizophrenia, and it was hard, or touching, to see how it humbled people. It was quite an intimidating thing for people to face.

Luke: Yeah, definitely. I think it took the life out of him.

He was such a passionate person, so upbeat and happy, always laughing and making jokes. Then after high school, going into uni days, I remember every time I saw him, it was kind of boring. I didn’t know what to talk to him about. He just wasn’t passionate anymore.

He’d given up music. He’d stopped playing footy. He wouldn’t go out to the parties or to our hangouts anymore. It was just like, I didn’t know what to talk to him about. I don’t think he had anything he really wanted to be a part of. He isolated himself quite a lot from everything.

The biggest thing from my perspective was just the character shift. He was such a positive person, and he was still very kind and generous to people, but not to himself. That was a really tough thing to watch.

Matt: The underlying theme with this is that it’s such a tough disease to live with that it almost pushes you into yourself. That’s what I gathered from the interviews I saw, and what you’re describing to me.

It would be such a relentless force that these people have to deal with. It would be so tiring, and it would push you within yourself. Unfortunately, people with schizophrenia are, I think, 10 times more likely, or something like that. Ten percent of the deaths of people with schizophrenia are from suicide.

When did you guys find out about Connor?

Harry: Myself personally, I remember it was the start of December in 2022. I actually had the day off work, an RDO, and I’d had a pretty big weekend at a music festival, so I was happy to have the day off. I was just asleep in bed.

Both my parents were working from home with COVID. Where my mum had set up her little home office was in the room next to mine. I think I half woke up when her phone rang. She was in a meeting and didn’t answer it. It was one of our friend’s mums calling her, and when she didn’t answer, she called my dad straight away.

I remember hearing this happen, but I was half asleep. Then I remember outside my door, my mum was saying to my dad, “Something happened.”

When they opened the door, my mum was already bawling her eyes out, crying. I knew something pretty bad had happened, but I didn’t know what.

My dad said to me, “Are you awake, mate?”

I said, “Yeah, yeah.”

He said, “Are you properly awake? Because we need to talk to you about something.”

He said, “We’ve just had a phone call. This is what happened last night.”

Then my dad said to me, “Connor Hogan’s gone.”

They came and sat on the bed. I was sitting up and I didn’t really know how to process it. Then my mum gave me a cuddle, and that was when it all hit me. The waterworks came on from there.

Then I took it upon myself to call other close mates throughout the day, so they found out in the best sort of way you can. I called a few of our good friends and my brother, and just repeated that process to them. I’d say, “Are you somewhere you can have a chat?” Then, “I’ve got some pretty bad news, and this is what it is.”

It was probably the worst day of my life, going through that. But it was good for me, I found, to do that with a fair few of the boys. We had pretty quick breakdowns of how we were feeling with different people. Each one of those phone calls went for half an hour to an hour, sharing stories and all that sort of stuff.

But yeah, it was a pretty rough day. You boys obviously had a pretty different experience with how you found out.

Christian: Luke, Elliot and myself, Elliot’s another member of our Crusade for Connor crew, we were actually overseas. We were in Vietnam at the time, somewhere in Southeast Asia.

I think it was Elliot’s mum who called him. We were all just sitting around in the bedroom and he came back with the news. There weren’t a lot of words said for a long time after that. It was pretty quiet in there, and just a few quiet tears, I’m sure.

Then I think we all shared a bit of a hug after a while. Then there were a lot of stories for a long time, at least a night or two. We were going out to different places and just sitting there, sharing a drink and thinking about Connor.

One of the biggest reasons why it was really hitting home was that Elliot, Luke, Connor and myself were so close in school. He was that larrikin and that energetic person who was so fun to be around. He would have been overseas with us on that trip if he was still the same Connor that he was in year 11.

It was pretty hard to be over there and get that news. Obviously that’s hard in the first place, but just knowing that he would have been there sharing those memories with us and having a great time if the mental illness hadn’t kicked in.

Matt: He must have been a really great person. You’ve described him as such, but the emotion that you guys still have in your eyes as you’re discussing this, something that happened nearly four years ago, it’s still with you.

Christian: Yeah. I don’t think any of us have a bad word to say about him. He was so bubbly, so energetic, so happy, so fun. The larrikin, making everyone laugh all the time.

He only ever had good intentions. He was an amazing human being, and it’s a shame that he’s not here getting to experience life and share memories with us for another 80 years.

Harry: I think as well, even with what we’re doing with Crusade for Connor, the stuff that we do with the walk and getting together, that’s the Connor that we remember and that’s what he would have absolutely loved to have done.

The different challenges we did the first year, getting out in nature, the boys going up mountains, people running and playing sport and playing music, that’s why we chose those challenges. Had life gone differently and Connor was still here, he would have been the first bloke to sign up to any of those things and say, “Absolutely boys, I’ll help out.” He would have brought the vibes up. That was just who he was and what he did.

Matt: I want to get to the Crusade and all that you guys are doing, but just from hearing you guys speak, it seems quite special, the connection you and your friends have, and how you processed it immediately. Especially you, Harry, bringing everyone together in the immediate aftermath.

Harry: Yeah. It was a funny day.

I remember my first call was to my younger sister to try and see if I could get through it without crying, and I don’t think I got through a single one after that anyway.

Obviously, it wasn’t a good thing to have to do, and I definitely wouldn’t have chosen it that way, but in some way I was also grateful to share that experience with those people. I tried to be very courteous to the people that I told and put it as delicately as you can.

It was good in the sense that it probably did help me process it a little bit more, because I talked about it a lot pretty quickly. Every different one of our mates that I spoke to had a different good story or funny story. It speaks to Connor’s character that everyone you spoke to could have a new positive thing to say about him.

Matt: Yeah. And it pretty quickly shifted to you guys wanting to honour his legacy in a sense.

Christian: Yeah, it did. I think maybe we even had the thought while we were still overseas that we wanted to do something.

It was pretty shocking to us that we had pretty much no awareness of schizophrenia, especially in young people. I don’t know why, but in my head it was more of an old person thing, or something that people have from birth, not the fact that it actually kicks in during adolescence, around 18 to 26-year-olds.

Seeing the effect that it could have, completely changing someone’s life from being the bubbliest person to being someone who just had no more of the same passions and didn’t really want to be around the same group of friends, in a click of a finger, it was very shocking.

Seeing that happen to someone and not being aware that it was even a thing, I think that kickstarted us. We had a lot of chats while we were still away that we wanted to do something that helps either raise some money that can go towards finding out more about treatment or diagnosis, or spreading awareness so that more people are aware of schizophrenia, the fact that it does affect young people, what to look out for and that sort of thing.

While we were away, I think that’s when we dreamed up the idea of doing a few different events that reflect who Connor was as a person and what his interests and passions were, and seeing if we could rally a bit of support around it.

Luke: For us in particular overseas, we weren’t there for the funeral. We were on a rooftop of a hostel watching over a video call.

Very, very kindly, Connor’s mum shouted us out in her speech and made us feel like we were a part of the day. But we just felt so distant from it all. We felt like we had to do something to make it up to him.

The really cool thing about the origin of Crusade for Connor was that we all wanted to do something separately. The reason it started off with 10 of us boys doing a big challenge week was because we came home and were like, “All right, we’ve got to do something.”

Then we spoke to Harry and spoke to Dan and all the other boys as well, and they were like, “Yeah, we’re going to do a fundraiser as well.” It wasn’t like we all came together and said, “What do you reckon, boys? What should we do?” We were all going to do something anyway, and then we just said, “May as well combine them.”

It was really awesome to all be on the same page of, “We just have to do something, because this sucks. We can’t let it happen again to someone else.” For us, it was a massive part of the grieving process as well.

Harry: For sure. It was definitely helpful.

Luke: We didn’t know what to do. Seeing Connor’s decline, we were there for him, we were supportive, we were nice to him and trying to hang out with him, but I don’t think we really knew how to go about it. We’d never really experienced that at all.

Being able to feel like we could do something afterwards, as much as it felt too late, it was like, okay, this is something we can do to at least help his family, help us, and hopefully help other people going through a similar situation.

Harry: It would have felt wrong for someone who had the impact that Connor had on us for his memory and legacy to just go off with a whimper. We were so driven to say, it can’t just be the end.

Matt: That’s a credit to you guys. It’s a credit to Connor as well.

I think there’s the tragedy of suicide in that, with hindsight, it feels so preventable. If we knew then what we know now, it could have been different.

In some ways, you have to be kind to yourself. You can’t change it. You’ve got to give respect to yourself at the time. You only knew what you knew. But what you guys are doing, you’re honouring Connor, and you’re also helping somebody down the line.

Harry: Yeah, that’s definitely a big part of what we hope we’re doing.

There’s a lot of guilt that you feel internally when something like that happens to someone you love and you’re really close to. You think about all the things you could have done differently, and there are a million things you could have done. But as we’ve touched on, we just didn’t really know what we were dealing with.

Hopefully a big part of Crusade for Connor is raising awareness of what schizophrenia actually is and how common it is. It’s not this crazy person, highly stigmatised disease. It’s something lots of people have, and lots of people in society are dealing with it. This is maybe how we can, as a community, deal with it together.

I remember speaking with Connor about his schizophrenia, and he was very sheepish to tell people. He didn’t want too many people knowing. I remember he’d said to me that he’d told people, and whether it was the schizophrenia or whether this was how he interpreted it, when he would tell people he had schizophrenia, they would be a bit standoffish and think he was a bit crazy.

If you’re already a little bit unsure of yourself, people reacting like that to you is going to send you further down a spiral. So a big part of what we’re doing is hoping that when people do tell others they have schizophrenia, people aren’t as shocked by it or aren’t as standoffish, and are a bit more equipped to deal with it than certainly we were.

Christian: I think another part of that is that we’re hoping whatever we can contribute can help work towards understanding the causes of schizophrenia and, hopefully in the future, having better treatment.

Speaking to NeuRA and just from our experiences with Connor, if he wasn’t taking medication, then he was getting the voices or hallucinations. But if he was taking the medication, the medication was dampening all of his emotions. His passion would go. A lot of the reason he went inside himself and isolated himself was actually the medication he was taking, and at the moment that’s kind of all there is to try and help someone like that.

The hope is, speaking to Neuroscience Research Australia, they have a small understanding of what’s happening, but they want to expand that. They’re hoping that by understanding more, they can have better treatments and maybe future medication that doesn’t have the same side effects that are currently seen.

Matt: I think we’re going to get to that side of things later on in this conversation.

There’s one similarity with what you guys are doing, and there’s more than one, but one similarity that’s jumped to my mind is the taboo, or the stigma, or I’ve used the word before, the intimidating nature of schizophrenia. When people hear it, they go back. They have this idea of it that isn’t what it is.

Through all the stuff I looked at, it was clear that the people who had lived through it felt it was misrepresented, even in a GP setting. They thought when they got a diagnosis, the GPs would say, “Well, that’s it.” But as they got through it, it turns out that, I think, anywhere from 25 to 75 percent could be mild or asymptomatic with the right treatment.

But like you’re saying, the treatment also needs progress so it doesn’t cost so much for the person.

Christian: To be fair, I am coming at this from one experience. I’m not someone who’s seen multiple people go through schizophrenia and multiple people have the same medication. Obviously, medication can affect different people in different ways. I don’t pretend to be an expert.

I’m just speaking from my singular experience.

Matt: And that’s how the conversation around any type of stigma changes. People bring forward their experience and they say, “This is what I saw.”

I think what you guys have found, and this will lead us straight into how the Crusade has grown, is when you speak your experience and share what you’ve been through, so many people come out of the woodwork. They either want to support, or they say, “Mate, exactly the same thing. We experienced the same thing. We just didn’t know anyone else was going through it.”

Christian: One hundred percent. That’s something I’ve found, and a way we’ve connected to people in the community that we didn’t necessarily have connections to before.

I’ve had random people come up to me because I’ve put posters and flyers up at my office in the public service. They’ll say, “How can I get involved with this? I have a relative who has schizophrenia and is going through the same thing. I’d love to support your cause.”

Being able to have a common way that people can connect, and provide that outlet for people to contribute, donate or help spread awareness, we love being able to provide that platform.

Matt: So let’s get to it. Crusade for Connor started in 2023.

Luke: Yes. May 2023.

Matt: How did it look in the first year? Because it looks a little different now, but how did it look in that first year when you guys got it going?

Luke: The first year, like we talked about before, everyone wanted to do their own thing, and we combined it together.

Our big goal was more the legacy piece of Connor. We wanted to represent who Connor was through our tasks.

Harry, Aaron and Dan did the David Goggins run, so four miles every four hours for 48 hours.

Harry: Yeah, with quite a few 10K runs there as well.

Luke: Christian, Braden and Finley did the Mount Kosciuszko hike. I played tennis for 24 hours straight. Locky did busking for 12 hours straight. Elliot and Gus were doing a triathlon every day for a week.

We wanted it to be things that represented Connor and why we enjoyed hanging out with him. Then we wanted to take it to the extreme and make it a big mental challenge. The physical challenge was one part of it, but we wanted the cognitive side of things to be really challenging, to try and put ourselves in his shoes a tiny bit and push ourselves in honour of him.

The first year, in the first week of May, we scheduled it out. We all did our tasks at different stages. Some of us carried over. The boys did their run while I was playing tennis. Elliot finished his triathlon for the day and came and had a hit of tennis afterwards.

It was a big, big week. We had a trivia night as well with our old high school mates and that sort of stuff too.

Matt: And you were fundraising at the start. You tried to aim for $10,000.

Luke: Ten grand was the big goal. We were like, “I don’t know, boys. That’s a lot of money. I don’t think people are going to give us that much.”

Then we posted it. I remember being at work and I put my phone on the desk, and it didn’t stop vibrating for about three hours straight. I was like, “What is going on?”

We got 10 grand in four days, straight off the bat. Then we were like, “Okay, I guess we’ve got to change the goal a little bit.” We were like, “What do you reckon, 20 grand? Surely that’s nuts.”

Harry: We were thinking, “We don’t want to get ahead of ourselves. That could be everyone who was going to donate. They all got on early.”

Luke: That’s right. Then I think we got that in two weeks. Then it was like, “Crap. Okay, we can’t change it more than two more times.”

The next goal had to be something challenging to get, but something we could hope to get. So we set 40 grand as the goal, and ended up raising $67,000 that first year.

That first year, it just blew us away. It was that piece of support that we knew was there, but just didn’t realise to what extent. That first year was a bit of a whirlwind.

Matt: And since then, you’ve gone on to $110,000 or $111,000 now?

Luke: Yeah.

Matt: Which is massive.

You spoke a little bit about what the money is going towards. It’s NeuRA, what’s the full name?

Luke: Neuroscience Research Australia.

Matt: Neuroscience Research Australia. We’ll put the link in the bio.

They’re trying to understand how it happens, the underlying causes, and also how to manage it. I think the money that you guys are raising will hopefully make that impact. But the awareness you guys are creating, and the sense of community around schizophrenia, and making people feel like it’s achievable to live with, overcome or get through, is what speaks to me the most.

You continued from that first year into the second year. How did that look?

Luke: After that first year, we visited NeuRA.

From the start, NeuRA was selected because Carolyn, Connor’s mum, chose NeuRA. We put her in charge of that and said, “Where do you want the money to go?”

There’s a particular schizophrenia research lab we wanted to directly put the funds to because Professor Cyndi Shannon Weickert, her brother had schizophrenia and went through the same sort of story. Carolyn really resonated with that.

After we visited NeuRA, we understood a bit more of the impact we had that first year and how important the funds were. But then we also had the reflection that so many people need to be more aware of what’s happening.

So we shifted a little bit. We’re still raising funds, and trying to raise as much money as we can, but we shifted a lot more onto the awareness side of things. We transitioned from the event week to now doing a 10K run or a 5K walk, to get as many people together as we can to have these conversations and still raise those funds, but more so raise the message of what schizophrenia is and how we can support each other.

Matt: Harry, you spoke before this podcast about how all different parts of the community came out of the woodwork and got behind the cause.

Harry: Yeah, it has been pretty incredible.

The first year, we probably had about 30 people down there supporting us. Then I think about 100 the second year. Last year we had about 300. Hopefully tomorrow we’ll exceed that number again.

The community aspect of it has grown. Even local businesses, like The Dock, they probably deserve the biggest shout-out because they’ve given big financial contributions. But yourself at Running for Resilience, you guys have really helped us figure out what direction we’re going to go in and how we would actually achieve that.

Plenty of local businesses have supported us financially, thrown a bit of weight behind us and helped promote us. Queanbeyan Tigers, who Christian plays for and Connor played his junior footy for, have been instrumental in helping us grow our brand and keep going to hopefully bigger and better things this year and next year.

Luke: With you guys, with Shooter and Ben at The Dock and all these other businesses, it wasn’t just the fact that everyone helped. It was that we literally just asked, “Is there anything we can do?” and straight away it was, “Yep, let’s do this, this and this. Let’s promote you here. We’ll give you this much money.”

We had to put in such little effort from the get-go. It was less about the outcome of donating a grand or whatever it might be. It was that it was so easy, and people were just so willing to be generous from the get-go.

The reason I went to The Dock in the first year for the walk and run was because it was raining, and the park we had was an open roof over the barbecue, so we couldn’t go there. We called them up the night before and said, “Sorry, this is so late notice, but can we get 150 people at The Dock tomorrow?”

They were like, “Yeah, no worries. We’ll book it out. We’ll sort it out.”

It just made our lives so much easier. The support has been insane.

Harry: Shooter, Benny, Jane, all our guys at The Dock are incredible people. Big shout-out to The Dock.

Matt: I remember Glenn Shooter came to the Goggins run, or the 10K run, the very first year, in the rain as well.

Luke: Yeah, it was pouring down with rain.

Matt: He was there with his dog. He just rocked up and said, “Right boys, let’s do this.” He’s the man. He’s one of those special people.

Something that’s come to my mind, thinking about the 300 people you had and the crowd you might get tomorrow, is Connor’s mum. What’s the day like for her when you see her?

Luke: It’s always an interesting one. From the conversations I’ve had with her and what I’ve seen, it’s a mix of being really grateful for continuing the legacy and keeping him alive in that sense, and trying to really fight for this cause.

But I think for all of us as well, it’s another reminder of what’s happened. It’s always a conflicting day. You have these really nice conversations with people and you see your mates you haven’t seen for a long time, but there’s also still that sense of, “Oh yeah, that happened.”

Otherwise, we wouldn’t have any reason to see Connor’s family, apart from having to do these sorts of events and making an effort for it. So it’s really nice that we can connect with her still and have those conversations again.

Matt: I hope this weekend goes really well.

For those listening, this is Friday, the day before Crusade for Connor. What are you guys doing in the next couple of weeks with a certain footy club?

Christian: Queanbeyan Tigers, who have been pretty supportive right the way through, threw the idea out: can we try and get the club involved a bit more this year?

We’ve organised to have a game round where the first-grade teams wear orange socks with Crusade for Connor logos on them in support of the cause. On May 31, Queanbeyan Tigers play at their home ground versus Batemans Bay. The first-grade teams will be wearing orange socks with C4C logos.

There’ll be a marquee stand set up with Crusade for Connor stuff there, manned by a few of the boys. If people have any questions, they can come up and ask, “What is it? What are you guys doing? Who are you supporting?” We can tell them we’re involved with NeuRA, and we’re trying to raise money as well as awareness.

The boys will be there to promote what we’re trying to do. The Tigers have been good enough to go ahead with it all, so I’m pretty keen for it. It should be a good game.

Matt: Are you playing?

Christian: I’ll play, yep. As long as I’m healthy. Touch wood. I should be running out there. It’ll be a good cause. I’m keen.

Matt: It’ll be great. Local footy is always the best, and when it means something for the people, it’s special.

I think it speaks to you guys that so many people are getting behind it. It speaks to Connor.

What would he say to all this?

Harry: I think he’d be pretty pumped up about it all. Like I said, he’d be the first bloke to sign up to help out.

I think he would appreciate the direction it’s gone in. He played all his junior footy through the Tigers, so I think he would really like that. Personally, I played a bit of junior footy with Christian and Connor at Queanbeyan as well, so that’s important to me that they are involved. I do really appreciate that, and I’m sure he would certainly appreciate that as well.

I think he’d probably be a bit flattered to see all the support he’s got. Obviously, losing his life to suicide and then to see all the support that he did actually have there, it’s heartbreaking that he couldn’t see it at the time. But I find it comforting that he did mean so much to so many people.

It’s bittersweet. It’s nice to see, but you also wish he was still here to see it.

Matt: We spoke about it with Andrew on the podcast. Obviously, you’d want it different, but it’s all we’ve got. However we can keep the people we’ve lost alive, it’s all we want to do. It’s all we’ve got to do.

I want to zoom back out and bring it back to Connor when he was still alive. What do you wish you could have changed in how you behaved?

Luke: I think for me, towards the end, because I didn’t understand what was happening, I was quite frustrated.

You’d organise a plan and then 20 minutes before you were leaving, he’d send you a text and go, “Oh no, I’m not going to make it.”

It was a really frustrating process of trying to be the best friend I could be, but it just felt like he wouldn’t let me. I think I blamed him a bit for that at the time. That was something I carried across.

My last few interactions with him, I wasn’t mean, but I wasn’t as over-the-top generous and kind as I wanted to be, because I was really fed up. I was like, “Man, I just want to see you. I just want to hang out with you.”

That’s something for me I wish I could have done a little bit differently. Just really kept persisting. “Mate, let’s go to your house. Let’s sit on your couch.” Just something. That’s a big one for me.

Harry: As we’ve touched on, and a big part of today, it would have been good to have been more informed about what we could have done better.

For me personally, as Luke said, just reaching out more. For anyone listening, if anyone you know is going through it, that’s probably the one piece of advice I would want to give. Don’t be disheartened if they’re bailing on plans with you. It’s not personal.

Keep reaching out. Keep making the effort. Because when they’re gone, you do carry a lot of guilt and you do think about all the things you could have done.

There are a million times I could have gone to his house, or said, “Mate, I’m picking you up. Let’s go for a kick of the footy, or let’s go get a beer, let’s go get a coffee,” whatever it is.

Hindsight is a wonderful thing. But if I could have had my time different, that’s probably the big thing I would have done. I would have made that little bit more effort to go and see him, lock in plans and try to give him a bit more time with his mates.

You never know. Can’t do anything about that now, though.

Luke: On that too, something that has been really reassuring for me, and I think for a lot of us boys, is talking to the NeuRA guys. I really wish I could have done more for him, but also recognising now that even if I was there all the time, that’s not going to fix his schizophrenia.

We need to have the research to get the medication right. It’s the medication that’s going to actually help him through that process. We’re just there to support him, not try and fix him.

That was something for me. I was really trying to fix what was going on, but now I recognise that you can’t. You just have to be there for him. Just be a good mate.

Matt: That’s the reason I’m asking you guys. I know it’s a tough one. I can see it in your eyes, Harry, because I recognise it in myself.

You’re hard on yourself that you didn’t do differently. I was certainly the same with my dad. It’s, “Man, it could be so different by just a few different behaviours.”

But at the same time, like I said before, you’ve got to give yourself a bit of credit. At the time, you meant well. You were operating with what you knew, and that’s all you can do in life, just do your best with what you’ve got at the time.

That’s why I respect you guys so much. You’re using something that’s obviously still very raw, but you’re laying out a blueprint of, “I wanted to do things differently. I wanted to know more if I could have my time again.”

Somebody is going to listen to this, or somebody is going to come across your community and go, “I recognise this. I’m going to change my behaviour.” In many ways, that is the legacy of Connor, the lives that the Crusade is going to impact for the better.

Luke: That’s the plan.

Matt: We’ll wrap up with this. What do you hope, beyond this year, with Crusade for Connor? If you could lay out the ambitious goal, what do you guys want? It’s certainly not a whimper at the moment, but I have a feeling you guys want to honour him even more.

Christian: Personally, I’d like to see it continue to expand beyond just connections that we have. That would be an awesome thing to see.

There are people now who have come and supported us for three, four, five years. Seeing those people then extend it to their connections, and it snowballing that way, would be amazing. That’s how we’re truly going to spread awareness, and not just have it contained inside a little bubble.

It’s always something I’m trying to push on my connections. Make sure you invite people who didn’t necessarily know Connor. We’re trying to make it bigger than that.

As much as Connor is always the driving force behind this, we want the awareness for schizophrenia to spread, and we want the day to become bigger.

A few things we’re trying to do, with the AFL side of things, I’d like it to be almost a club-wide thing eventually. I think Tigers are on board with that. Having the whole weekend, where it’s not just the first-grade people wearing the socks. It’d be cool to have the whole club wearing the socks, or can we extend it somehow to AFL Canberra? There are always avenues I’m trying to chase in that route.

And I know next year, I’ll throw to Luke, we’ve got some plans to bring back the events.

Luke: Next year is year five, so we’re thinking we’ll keep the walk and run alive, because it’s working really well to bring people together. But we want to go big.

We’ll do the event week again, I think, and try to step it up from last time. Maybe I’ll do 24 hours and one minute of tennis, make it slightly bigger.

We’ll go big again and maybe find new things that represent Connor to us, and push ourselves again. It’ll be a big one next year.

Harry: You boys have touched on it perfectly there. Five years is a nice number to probably go a bit bigger on again.

It’s been a forever-evolving journey for us. Like Luke said, our first goal was $10,000 and we didn’t really have much ambition past that. For me personally, it was when we went and visited the NeuRA facility. That was quite an emotional day.

We saw Cyndi, Yasmin and Hayley, who were the girls in the lab. They were just these inspirational people who were so passionate about what they were doing. They really wanted to help people. That was a big driving factor for me personally to want it to keep going, and to keep helping these people help people. They’re the ones doing the hard work. They’ve got this impossible task on their hands, and they’re taking it on every day just to help people.

For me, that was a big driving factor in trying to keep it getting bigger and bigger. After tomorrow, we’ll see how we go and reassess the situation and see what direction and what avenues open up.

Like I said, it’s a forever-evolving process. There is a lot of hard work behind the scenes, but it is very, very rewarding.

Luke is probably the main driving factor. He probably carries the team a bit, and the rest of us help him where we can. It is exciting, but also a tough thing to organise.

Christian: One other thing I’d like to throw in there. As much as we build it as the fun run and the walk, it doesn’t have to be just that.

Thanks to The Dock for getting on board with this, but we’re trying to use The Dock as that meeting place. As much as people go out and do the walk or the run, if you don’t want to do either of those things, we still like people to turn up.

When everyone gets back at the same time, which is the goal, the walk and the run are hopefully the right distance that people are all coming back together, everyone can share a drink, maybe a meal, and it’s just a meeting place where they can talk.

If mental health comes up in the conversation, that’s a tick. But even if it’s just a time that people are rekindling friendships, that matters. There are friends that we barely see who show up. They travel back from the coast or from Sydney or Melbourne. Just having that way that everyone’s regularly catching up is something that’s important to us.

Matt: Absolutely.

It seems pretty special, what you guys have. Obviously, there’s still a strong connection with Connor in a tragic way, but I can also see you guys light up when you’re talking about how you’re going to bring new challenges in that reflect him.

There’s also quite a strong connection that you guys seem to have with each other. I admire people like you guys who do what you can, however you can, to improve the world around you.

There’s no doubt in my mind that it’s going to keep evolving, and it’s going to be fun to watch what you guys are up to next. It’s not going anywhere anytime soon. It’s great to see.

Thank you so much for coming on this podcast, because I truly believe stories like this help somebody else find their way through the unknown. It gives someone a blueprint through times of ambiguity.

I respect you guys a lot. Thank you very much for coming on.

Luke: Thank you, mate.

Harry: Thanks for having us. Really appreciate the chance to tell Connor’s story and promote what we’re trying to do. As you said, hopefully it does help guide someone through the unknown. That’s probably a good way to put it, and that’s a big part of what we’re trying to achieve.

Thanks for the chat.

Christian: Thanks, mate. Much appreciated.