Tributes flow for Noah

- His cheeky smile and sporting talent tragically taken

PRESIDENT of the Poowong Football Netball Club, Ted Attenborough, said it best at the weekend when he stated you don’t know what tragedy really feels like until it happens to one of your own.

He was speaking about the outpouring of emotion for 19-year-old Noah Peacock, who was killed in a car crash on his way home and ultimately to football training at Poowong last Thursday afternoon, August 11 at about 4.30pm.

The incident is the subject of an investigation by Major Collision Investigation Unit police, after the driver of the other car, a 25-year-old Hampton Park man, who was seen driving erratically along the South Gippsland Highway before the head-on collision, tried to escape from the scene.

The Poowong Football Netball Club wrapped its arms around Noah’s family on Saturday as all teams, football and netball, remembered Noah and paid tribute to his contribution to the club.

“He was a young bloke just starting out in life, at the age of 19,” said Mr Attenborough.

“His cheeky smile, a dry sense of humour that was starting to come out as he was getting older.

“It’s been an absolute tragedy for the family, for Noah’s mates, their families and the whole community.”

The second son of Jason and Michelle Peacock of Poowong, with brothers Jake 21 and Bailey 16, Noah was educated locally at Poowong Consolidated School and at the Korumburra Secondary College, leaving at the start of Year 12 to take up an apprenticeship opportunity with Hayden’s Glass in Leongatha.

It wasn’t his first choice, after doing pre-apprenticeship training as an electrician, but the pandemic intervened and Noah took the opportunity presented, and has loved every minute of his new career, working mostly at domestic glazing in the Leongatha and Inverloch areas.

But his first loves were basketball and football. As a fiercely loyal teammate, he enjoyed nothing more than meeting the challenge posed by sport with his mates, in the case of basketball, up to and including state level competition.

In football, he played in an Under 16 grand final with Korumburra-Bena and an Under 18s grand final, up from the Under 16s, for Poowong only a couple of years ago.

On June 4 this year, he debuted for the Poowong Seniors against local rivals Nyora and was part of the winning team, going on to play three further matches in the Seniors this season.

Acknowledged by his family as a cheeky, full-of-fun and as fiercely loyal to his mates as he was to his family, they said he was also the glue, the rock, the one who often brought them together as a family.

Having already joined with the community in its shared grief at the weekend, the family must wait now for investigations to take their course before making their own funeral arrangements.

It’s a situation beyond tragedy or reason, made all the worse for the circumstances of a wonderful, young man’s life and untimely death.