I have motor neurone disease (MND) and walk with a cane. Dikana was shocked to see how feeble I was. We shed a few tears together. I was certain that I would be gone long before he was.

So, it came as a bit of a shock when, a few months ago, Dadi Toka Junior told me Dikana was himself suffering from a terminal disease. And when the news came through in the last few days that he had died aged 66, I felt a deep sense of grief and loss.

In reading other tributes I have found out that his nickname, ‘Ten Gun’, had nothing to do with rugby league but is a common nickname for anybody in Hanuabada named Dikana and owes its origin to the reactions some years before of one Hanuabadan youth to a Western movie.

To those of us who played with and against him, ‘Ten Gun’ was a very appropriate nickname. Dikana was always firing on all barrels.

He was a great team man and your own confidence was reinforced because you knew he would never let the side down. He was a punishing defender and very elusive in attack.

That Hanuabada Hawks team in the mid-1970s was a force to be reckoned with. Alongside Dikana, there was the unbelievably talented Guba John, Lohia Daroa, Heni Nou, who was my opposite number at halfback, and a cast of other players who did their club and the village proud.

But of them all my relationship with ‘Ten Gun’ was top.

Hanuabada – indeed the nation of Papua New Guinea – has lost one of the best.

My sympathy goes out to his family and those dearest to him. Dikana, you may be gone but the memories you evoke live on.