Death
After smoking heavily for most of his life, in 2003 Warren publicly announced that he had been diagnosed with lung cancer. Several months later FIFA president Sepp Blatter presented a frail Warren with the FIFA Centennial Order of Merit for his services to the game in Australia.
His last public appearance was made during the launch of the rebranded Australian domestic football league, the A-League, which replaced the previous National Soccer League.
Weeks before death, Warren was asked what he wanted his sporting legacy to be - his answer "I Told You So", a phrase which has become a catch-cry in Australian football and during the 2006 FIFA World Cup appeared on the scoreboard in the backdrop of the SBS World Cup studio.
He died of respiratory complications related to his cancer on 6 November 2004, at the Royal Prince Alfred Hospital in Sydney. He was awarded a full state funeral, the first to be held for a sportsman.
Read more about this topic: Johnny Warren
Famous quotes containing the word death:
“Parents shall not be put to death for their children, nor shall children be put to death for their parents; only for their own crimes may persons be put to death.”
—Bible: Hebrew, Deuteronomy 24:16.
“Such as the wreck of the Hesperus,
In the midnight and the snow!
Christ save us all from a death like this,
On the reef of Norman’s Woe!”
—Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1809–1882)
“We term sleep a death ... by which we may be literally said to die daily; in fine, so like death, I dare not trust it without my prayers.”
—Thomas Browne (1605–1682)