Hawkins was joined by community identities, including a special Platinum Jubilee-themed queen, for the sliding event ahead of the standalone Ballarat Football League senior clash at Bacchus Marsh this Queen's Birthday long weekend.

Bacchus Marsh Football Club had chalked up more than $36,000 by Sunday morning for their efforts towards Fight MND's work to find a cure for motor neurone disease, put in the spotlight by AFL identity Neale Daniher's personal battle.

This effort more than doubled the Cobras' initial fundraising target.

Cobras president Mark Farrell said it was an incredible community response. Farrell took the slide with popular junior Cobras' identity Elliott "The Goldfish" Johnston in a joint campaign with Farrell wearing a goldfish-themed suit.

"The community really got behind it. I'd be down the street and the girls in the coffee shop would be going on about going down the slide, there were posters up all over town and guys I went to school with years ago were donating me money. Even people down the street were stopping me and asking about it," Farrell said.

"Doug [Hawkins] really helped promote it. For everyone else he is an icon, but here he's such an approachable bloke who likes to help out the club."

Bacchus Marsh man Phil O'Keefe, who has motor neurone disease, was on hand to watch the spectacle. O'Keefe raised more than $5,000 with family and friends sliding on his behalf.

"MND is a bastard of a thing," O'Keefe said via the Cobras' social media. "It takes everything from you except your mind, from the most mundane tasks to the most complex."

The neurological disease attacks controlling muscles to speech, breathing, swallowing and movement with nerves failing to work properly. There is no cure.

Farrell said seeing O'Keefe put the icy pain, the split second horror mid-way down the slide and the initial struggles to breathe once dunked under water all into perspective.

AFL great Neale Daniher put the disease he calls The Beast in the spotlight with his own experience.

The annual Big Freeze at the G returns to AFL action at the G on Monday, headlined by Australian tennis hero Ash Barty.

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