Such a good sport - in his own right or helping others

NEW YEAR HONOURS
Matt Marshall was an athletic youngster, winning the sports championship at his school, playing rugby for the 1st XV and representing Scotland as a junior sprinter.
But it is his huge contribution to other people's athletic endeavours which has earned him inclusion in the New Year honours, in which he has been made an Officer of the New Zealand Order of Merit for his services to sports medicine.
Dr Marshall, 78, was born in Scotland in 1927. His father died when young Matthew - an only child - was aged 10. During World War Two, the lad was evacuated from Glasgow to Cally House in South Scotland with 99 other boys and 100 girls to avoid German planes bombing their city.
A medical degree from the University of Glasgow in 1951 was followed by a stint in the Royal Army Medical Corp, and he served in Kenya as a surgeon with the King's African Rifles during the Mau Mau uprising from 1952-54.
Back in Glasgow he obtained a diploma in anaesthetics in 1957. In the same year he married radiographer Elizabeth Robertson, who had been capped 11 times playing hockey for Scotland, and they sailed for New Zealand with Dr Marshall installed as ship's surgeon on the SS Captain Cook.
He started a general practice in Whangarei with Dr Joe Donald and began fostering acceptance of sports medicine in Northland and eventually New Zealand.
Dr Marshall began a 33-year appointment as honorary doctor to the North Auckland Rugby Union in 1959, and later obtained similar roles with Northland cricket, hockey and swimming organisations.
He accompanied New Zealand soccer and hockey teams overseas from 1969-81 and was director of medical services for Commonwealth Games teams which New Zealand sent to Brisbane in 1982 and Edinburgh in 1986, and the team sent to the Olympic Games in Los Angeles in 1984.
He retired from general practice in 1995, but his role in sports medicine continued. He was appointed International Rugby Board co-ordinator for dope testing in Oceania and the Pacific Rim from 2000-02 and is still on a three-man New Zealand Sports Drugs agency committee which deals with athletes who have to take banned substances as medication.
He was awarded life membership of NZ Sports Medicine in 1996 made patron of Sport Northland in 2001, a position he still holds.
Dr Marshall views his ONZM as a great honour bestowed in recognition of the development of sports medicine as a speciality, rather than a personal accolade.
He had "a wonderful time" working with some great athletes and enjoyed the links he had with people as diverse as star runner John Walker and Northland's rugby-playing Going brothers, Sid, Ken and Brian.
And Dr Marshall said he would never have been able to achieve so much without the backing of his wife, their three children and the very understanding patients in his general practice. "You can't disappear to the Olympic or Commonwealth Games for a month or so without their support."