IT was the Newcastle Knights' inaugural coach, the late, great Allan McMahon, who perhaps summed it up best.
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"Have you ever heard Jack Newton ask anyone to tie his shoes, or to help him get dressed?" McMahon would ask his players.
McMahon's troops got the message loud and clear.
Don't come complaining about a corked thigh, or a bruised shoulder, or a dose of the flu. Grit your teeth and get on with it, because feeling sorry for yourself will get you nowhere in life.
If anyone was entitled to self-pity, it was Jack Newton, who died on Thursday night, aged 72.
Newton was in the prime of his golfing career when, aged 33, he suffered an unimaginable, life-changing accident.
After attending a Sydney Swans match at the SCG in July, 1983, Newton was running late to catch a return flight to Newcastle on a small plane, a Cessna 210.
On a wet, miserable night, he hurried onto the tarmac, just as the plane started moving to take off.
As he attempted to catch the pilot's attention, he was struck by the propellor, sustaining horrific injuries.
He lost his right arm and right eye, and his torso was also sliced open.
Rushed to intensive care, he was given less than a 40 per cent chance of survival.
As Jack lay in a hospital bed, fighting for life, his wife Jackie agonised over whether to take their two young children, Kristie and Clint, in to see him.
Eventually, after explaining to them that "Daddy can cuddle with one arm", she relented, recalling years later that Jack's love for his children probably saved him from an early grave.
Weeks later he was released from hospital, then readmitted, after bouts of pneumonia and septicaemia and numerous surgeries.
Eventually he returned home and started to ponder what the rest of his life would entail.
He knew, obviously, that his days as a professional golfer were over. A glorious career, during which he had finished runner-up in the 1975 British Open and the 1980 Masters - as well as winning 13 tournaments around the world - had been cruelly terminated.
Yet that was the least of his worries.
"I had to get myself right first and foremost," Newton recalled in a 2019 interview with nationalclubgolfer.com. "I had a wife and two young kids and I have always maintained that you have two choices in those sorts of situations.
"You can sit in a corner and sulk for the rest of your life or you can get on with it.
"I didn't like the former."
One of the first steps in his healing process was to get back on the golf course.
Common sense suggested Newton would be doing well to hit a ball, let alone play 18 holes. Yet through sheer willpower, he managed to get his handicap down to 12. Anyone who has ever played the game will recognise what a remarkable feat that was, in its own right.
Meanwhile, he established himself as a television commentator and course designer and, in 1986, launched the Jack Newton Junior Golf Foundation, which has since raised in the vicinity of $20 million to help young players realise their dreams.
Another fund-raising event, the Jack Newton Celebrity Classic - attended on an annual basis by a who's who of the Australian entertainment and sporting industries - has donated millions more to charity, in particular diabetes treatment and research.
If golf was Newton's No.1 sporting love, his passion for rugby league was not far behind.
He was one of the first to sign up as a season-ticket holder in the Knights' foundation season, and soon became great mates with coach McMahon and those pioneering players.
He quickly acquired the unofficial label of the club's No.1 fan. It was hard to argue that a bloke with a Knights emblem on his glass eye didn't deserve it.
Three years after the Knights' inaugural crusade, when McMahon started to lose the dressing room amid a run of disappointing results, it was Newton who tried, unsuccessfully, to broker a truce between the coach and his players.
A decade later, when Clint made his NRL debut in the blue and red, there was no prouder father than Jack.
Six years down the track, Clint walked out on the Knights mid-season, citing irreconcilable differences with then coach Brian Smith, and proceeded to win a grand final with Melbourne Storm.
At the time, I wrote some columns defending the besieged Smith and taking Clint to task.
When he returned to the Knights in 2014, Clint called me, unprompted, to say he held no hard feelings, and I've had the utmost respect for him ever since.
I'm not sure Jack was quite so forgiving, but, as a father myself, I respect that too.
One of my most vivid memories of Jack was after an NRL game at Central Coast Stadium in 2007, when he wanted to visit Clint in the dressing room.
A security guard asked for his pass. "I'm Jack Newton," Jack said. The security guard wouldn't budge. "I'm Jack Newton," Jack repeated, at which point an NRL official intervened and, apologetically, ushered the living legend past the checkpoint.
I can't imagine Jack needed to show any pass when he arrived this week at the Pearly Gates. They surely rolled out the red carpet.
