Phil Hughes' last text msg to best friend
Phil Hughes' last text msg to best friend
'Love u... miss you... love u... miss you.'
This is the heartbreaking last text cricketer Phillip Hughes sent his best friend, two weeks before he died from a fatal accident at the Sydney Cricket Ground, the Daily Mail Online reports.
Meagan Simpson, 26, was on holiday in Hawaii when she got the tender message.
As the world mourns the death of the Australian batsman, who would have turned 26 last Sunday, the young man from Macksville who loved his cows as much as he loved cricket, Meagan remembers the Phillip Hughes that she knew.
The pair bonded over late night phone calls, coffee and shopping trips and helped set each other up on dates, far away from the spotlight cast over Phillip as an international sports star.
Meagan met Phillip three years ago, when he chatted to her in a Sydney pub, and they were inseparable ever since.
‘We were at his favourite pub in Sydney, The Palace at Breakfast Point… he tried to pick me up and told me he was a banker. I didn’t know who he was at that point,’ Meagan fondly told Daily Mail Australia.
The sports coach was working for AFL team the Giants at the time and was probed by players on the team who spotted her in the pub, about how she knew Phillip.
‘They said “he’s an Australian cricketer”. I felt like a silly bugger. But that was him being humble.’
After their first meeting Phillip called Meagan ‘every day for the next week’.
‘We had both been through pretty bad breakups; neither of us wanted to start anything new and didn’t want to hurt each other.
‘He said “I really want you in my life forever” and we just became friends,’ Meagan explained.
As she struggles to come to terms with her loss, Meagan said she still questions what Phillip saw in her that first night they met.
‘We clicked; we just got along so well. And from then it’s been weekly conversations or late night calls, or whenever we needed each other.’
They pair both loved sport and Meagan learned a lot about cricket by going to watch Phillip play. He ‘now loves the Giants because I worked there,’ she said.
Heartbreakingly, Meagan described Phillip as ‘the best friend anyone could ask for’.
‘He was always there when you needed him and that says a lot when someone is so famous and when he has so many other things going on. Whenever I needed him he was there.
‘He was cheeky and funny and always made you laugh. He just had a genuine interest in you and invested time into our friendship.
‘I still don’t know how I got so lucky to have him as a friend; obviously he saw something in me.’
Phillip introduced Meagan to all of ‘the boys whether cricketers or mates’ and since his death, on Thursday 27 November, Australian Cricket Captain Michael Clarke told her: ‘You know he loved you so much, that’s all we need to say about it.’
‘I did share him with two other best friends, they were male. I was the only girl best friend who was there purely as a friend, nothing else.
‘Some struggled with that. People always thought we were dating but in Phillip’s eyes it was “Meagan is just one of the boys”,’ she explained.
Meagan said Phillip acted the same way in front of her as he did with the boys and she ‘really respected that about him’.
The best friends kept in regular contact even when Meagan was living in the US and Phillip was in England, she laughed that he ‘could never figure out Skype’.
‘In the last few months he worked out Facetime. But we couldn’t talk via Facebook, he didn’t have Facebook or Instagram – he preferred a good old fashioned meeting and having a coffee.
‘He was always there though. He sent me flowers on my birthday no matter how far away he was.’
On his frequent coffee catch ups, Phillip would sometimes have three or four in a row, going from café to café so he could continue talking.
‘We’d go from one place to another in one day. He loved taking me shopping. I have so many memories of him trying things on and him saying “what about this one”… he’d ask “which tie should I wear with my suit?”
‘He loved his fashion and a good fitting cap and shirt and suit. He always checked himself before he went out of the house,’ Meagan remembered.
Since Phillip was killed after he was hit in the head by a ball, during a Sheffield Shield match at the Sydney Cricket Ground – in a rare and tragic accident – thousands of people around the world have laid out tributes and offered condolences to the batsman’s family and friends.
Meagan said the support has been ‘phenomenal’ and Phillip ‘would be looking down laughing and thinking “all this for me”.’
‘I don’t think he realised how truly loved he was. It’s so good to see but at the same time it is hard sharing such a personal thing with rest of world. You want to be selfish at times, but its’ a testament to Phillip the person.
‘We can’t thank the world enough.’
When they weren’t joking around about ‘sexy cows’ at Phillip’s parent’s farm in Macksville, the pair would talk about their future and how one day Meagan would bring her children to see their Uncle Phil at the farm.
‘We spoke about a lot of things. Whether it was cricket or what present to buy his sister for her birthday, girl problems he may have had.
‘He talked about how he missed his parents. I’ve never seen someone love their parents so much, he would call his dad five times a day,’ she recalled.
Despite his fame and success on the cricket pitch, Meagan said one thing was always clear: ‘His life goal was to go back to Macksville.’
‘He wanted to find the right girl and he wanted to have children who grew up on the farm with him up in Macksville. He didn’t care if they played cricket or not, he wanted a family like his family,’ she said.
Meagan has vowed to visit Phillip’s parents in his hometown three or four times a year ‘for the rest of my life’ and has already book a trip there for between Christmas and New Year’s.
She has so many memories of her time with Phillip and has ‘no words to truly say how amazing he is’.
‘We joked my kids would come up to see Uncle Phil and the cows. That’s the thing; he was an Aussie cricketer and for some he was just a farmer from Macksville.