Still refereeing first grade rugby league well into his 60s, “Sugar Ray” as he is known in the fraternity has the entire footballing community behind him after recently being diagnosed with cancer.

“Mate I shed a tear,” old friend and former referee Ray Inskip said after hearing the news.

“The referee mob is all family, and knowing him he’ll recover very quickly.

“He is a great family man and supporter of the community.”

The pair grew up together in Candelo and Ryan’s first match as a referee was on Inskip’s line in a battle between Pambula and Bega in the mid 1980s.

The referee community will be donating every cent of their final round pay packet to Ryan’s cause, as well as holding raffles and fundraisers at each venue across the region.

“It was a shock to me when he told me recently and it shows it can happen to anybody,” fellow Group 16 referee Michael Haigh said.

“I only ran into him a week ago and I told him he should come back to referee a game and that’s when he told me about the prostate cancer.

“Talking to him, he seemed positive”

When Ryan disappeared from the scene many referees assumed he was training one of his young fighters for a tournament as a coach for ACT Boxing.

“He was still boxing up until last year and training a few guys so I just assumed he’d been hard at work with all that,” Haigh said.

“As most referees are Men of League members we’ll approach them for a big raffle at a bowling club.”

As a middleweight boxer, Ryan fought 15 professional bouts over a total of 38 rounds between 1974 and 1984.

Two of Ryan’s fights were in Bega, both finishing with his opponents Alan Bayliss and John Humphrey knocked out on the canvas.

He finished his professional career with 11 wins, 10 of them knockouts before taking on the Masters Games in both boxing and hockey.