Jim Stynes dead at 45

Football legend Jim Stynes has died after a long and brave battle with cancer.

He was just 45.

It marks the end of the extraordinary two-and-a-half year health battle shared far more openly than anybody could have expected.

But his inspiring fight for life came to an end in private and as he would have wanted - with wife Sam and children Matisse and Tiernan by his side.

It was an intimate and hugely emotional end for the man who earned himself a place in the hearts of almost every Victorian.

Put simply, there was nothing bad to say about our Jim.

Tributes are already flooding in for the Irishman who made an indelible mark on the Aussie game by becoming the first international player to claim the prestigious Brownlow Medal.

He was also an Order of Australia recipient and a Victorian and Melburnian of the year.

Footy personalities have declared Stynes one of the greatest to have ever pulled on the boots.

They've also credited his presidency as key to helping steer the league's oldest club through form slump and last year's coaching crisis.

Others have hailed his ability to reach out to those in need as an innate gift few could match.

He championed the cause of young Australians through The Reach Foundation, an organisation credited with pulling thousands of young lives back from the brink.

Big Jim wore his heart on his sleeve and touched lives because of it.

His death marks the end of his highly publicised health crisis that began when he announced in July 2009, he was being treated for a rare melanoma on his spine.

He would eventually undergo numerous operations including risky surgery to remove tumours from his brain.

Stynes' decision to fight the disease so publicly earned him favour with thousands of patients on a similar journey. "Jim has added a face to what thousands of people are going through," said one.

He used Twitter to keep his loyal fans updated on his health but it was a televised documentary that revealed far more about how cancer had changed his life.

Alternative therapies were among the treatment options pursued but in the end, Stynes said it was the support and love of those closest to him that really kept him going.

On more than one occasion he credited his arduous health battle for giving him the opportunity to take stock; to finally fill his life with the things that truly mattered. And he did.

In December, Stynes stunned his medical team when - just two weeks after the sixth operation to remove a tumour from his brain - he boarded a Christmas flight to Colombia with his family. It was an extraordinary display of tenacity from a man who simply wasn't ready to give up.

But Stynes never kidded himself. He knew it would be the last chance for the family to really escape together.

For a few sun-starched weeks, they were able to forget the stark reality that was just weeks away. Pictured with his wife and kids on the shore of an idyllic tropical island, Jim beamed.

It was a fitting image and one Stynes and his wife chose to be the last they made publicly.

They returned to Victoria knowing that each and every day mattered more than ever.

In January, two years and seven months after he was diagnosed, Stynes stepped down as Demons' president.

He had finally relinquished a role that had helped define him as a leader who gave a battered club a new beginning.

Yet through it all, Stynes had learned there was far more to life. He just learnt it in the cruellest of ways.

"I have had an experience that in some ways, I am very blessed," he once said. "I have had an insight that not many people get. When you are faced with that prospect, it does make you sit back, stop and go OK, what is really important now?

"You realise your family - my kids and my wife Sam - they are everything to me. It's not just enough to say it - you've got to live it."

Jim Stynes 1966-2012