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Elite footballers are young, rich and often act as if they are above the law, but they are not invincible. A high-flying AFL premiership player learned that the hard way last spring when he nearly died in an American hospital.
The strange circumstances surrounding a super-fit professional athlete being revived after "flatlining" is a story most football insiders know - but none talk about it publicly.
"Mate, it's right, but they'd hang me off the grandstand if I went on the record," a respected former player and official told The Sunday Age. "It's such a small world, football."
Like several other well-placed sources who confirmed the story, he made it clear that the game's unwritten code of silence was in this case reinforced with corporate spin and implied threats of reprisals against anyone who broke ranks.
The perceived risk of lawsuits has smothered all but the most oblique references to the mysterious medical emergency that could have ended with the player coming home in a coffin. Instead, he spent several days in hospital before being able to travel - and did not rejoin his teammates.
There are potent reasons for such an explosive scandal to stay "in club". The AFL and its 16 clubs have much at stake: multimillion-dollar sponsorships could evaporate if the lucrative AFL "brand" is damaged with one burst of bad publicity. And publicity could not get much worse than exposure of what really happened in that Las Vegas hospital five months ago.
On the record, players and club officials go along with the club's cryptic explanation dismissing the incident as a routine medical matter. Off it, insiders have told friends and relatives their man overdosed.
It fits a pattern of misbehaviour by AFL players and a tendency for clubs to cover up for those considered too valuable to lose - at the expense, sometimes, of lesser lights axed to protect sponsorships and the game's lucrative brand image.
The spectre of substance abuse hangs over the Las Vegas episode as it hangs over other strange incidents - the arrest, for instance, of Geelong's Steve Johnson in Wangaratta this year after worried householders called police when he staggered into their yard late at night and allegedly tried to drink from a bottle of suntan oil on their patio.
Then there is the weird behaviour of Carlton's Brendan Fevola in attacking an Irish barman, recently eclipsed by Eagles midfielder Daniel Kerr's bizarre late-night attack on a Perth taxi driver outside a hospital where he had taken a friend from a nightspot after a sudden bout of illness. Kerr is unlucky like that — his girlfriend was already in hospital after suffering a seizure.
Kerr's erratic lifestyle is notorious even in a city where footballers' excesses are mostly forgiven by adoring fans, some of whom run AFL clubs. The sort of fans who supported Brownlow medallist Ben Cousins when he left his car on a busy highway and bolted to avoid a booze bus — and when he was found unconscious near Melbourne's casino after another long night.
A young woman who went out with Kerr has told close friends she was shocked because he could not remember where he was — or who he was sleeping with — after he woke from "a big night".
Kerr asked her one summer night to pick him up from a party where he had been involved in a fight. When she arrived he looked at her blankly and said, "Who are you? Are you my lift?" She stopped seeing him after that.
Another regular at Perth's nightspots said Kerr "is constantly out of it and makes no secret of it. He sits around in bars and slurs his words. He doesn't recognise you from one day to the next."
One of Kerr's teammates narrowly escaped being caught in a police raid on the Red Sea bar on December 16 last year, where he had been drinking with members of the Coffin Cheaters bikie gang.
A well-known former Eagle was close to a champion dubbed "the Cocaine Kid" — and shared his taste in drugs.
"Girls I know used to go around to his house and he would be snorting coke off the coffee table," the woman said.
There was a sinister element to the big man's edgy lifestyle: neighbours saw people visiting him at all hours and were relieved when he moved out.
For all their on-field success, the Eagles have the worst reputation for drug and alcohol-fuelled misbehaviour. Other clubs have troubles — some of them inherited when they take on problem players "released" by original clubs — but the Eagles are notorious for flying too high.
"Drugs are rife at West Coast," a former club official declares. "At first the club didn't want to believe it. Now they say, 'Our blokes do it but they're no worse than any other club'. They are kidding themselves."
One cocaine-using player told him more than half the team were "into it". Worse, at least two club stars were "into the super, whizzbang stuff" so heavily that their supplier gives them other drugs to mask the effects of post-game binges. The supplier, he says, is a supporter keen to trade A-list "party" drugs to rub shoulders with A-list players. The person is not, as some might assume, well-known Perth identity John Kizon, though Kizon's socialising with players has long caused heartburn for the club.
West Coast was warned about the Kizon connection in 2001 when a police source told the club of taped conversations linking Brownlow medallist Ben Cousins and the since-disgraced Michael Gardiner with underworld figures. (Gardiner was sacked by the Eagles after causing a high-speed car crash while drunk.)
The charismatic and calculating Kizon, a convicted heroin trafficker and former boxer from Fitzroy, was a friend of the late Alphonse Gangitano — he flew to Melbourne to be a pallbearer at his funeral after Gangitano was shot in early 1998 — and is close to the powerful Coffin Cheaters gang.
In Perth he is admired by some, feared by many. It was inevitable he would make contact with local heroes the Eagles. Gangsters and stars often find each other.
In grand final week 2001, police saw Kizon meet Gardiner and Cousins at the Crown Casino complex; the three drank together at Fidel's Cigar Bar later that night.
Despite warnings, the two players did not distance themselves from Kizon; they were seen drinking with his Melbourne friends after an Eagles-Carlton game in early 2002.
The Carlton connection is interesting. The Moran family, which lost three members in Melbourne's underworld war, was closely connected to Carlton for three generations.
One of the Blues' great finals players reputedly played under the influence of drugs — "his eyes would be rolling around like mad", recalls a contemporary — and later became a dealer among younger players. He saw a Carlton player at a nightclub during the finals in the late 1990s and, while commiserating with him for being dropped from the side, slipped the embarrassed player some drugs. He is still reputed to deal to players and is not the only one.
Three years ago, Carlton recruits Laurence Angwin and Karl Norman were exiled from AFL football for turning up to a morning "recovery" session under the influence of ecstasy. Angwin now plays in Cairns, Norman in country Victoria.
Carlton is quick to discredit Angwin's claims that AFL players in Melbourne introduced him to ecstasy. "There would have been eight blokes (Carlton players) there that day who wouldn't have passed a test. Five out of the nine in the leadership group couldn't make eye contact with us when they called us in because they'd been out with us," he said.
Angwin's point is backed by a former AFL coach of impeccable character and high standing. He tells the story of a Crows star (with reputed shady connections) taking a fishing tackle box on a team trip. Inside were not hooks and sinkers, just dozens of brightly coloured pills. Drugs.
That might disappoint some club officials, but it won't shock them. They are now coping with a relentless rise in drug use and clubs are getting nervous.
There already is a quiet move to reverse the collateral damage done by the push against drinking. A former coach says some clubs are quietly reviving the practice of having a few drinks after a game, just like the old days.
But it's hard for some to go back after walking the wild side. One All-Australian player who made too much of his days in the sun boasted to a club official: "You haven't lived until you've had (a beauty queen) snort coke off your d---." The beauty is doing well, the player's career is in ruins.
http://www.theage.com.au/news/natio...1173478727321.html?page=fullpage#contentSwap2
Whos our fisherman?
The strange circumstances surrounding a super-fit professional athlete being revived after "flatlining" is a story most football insiders know - but none talk about it publicly.
"Mate, it's right, but they'd hang me off the grandstand if I went on the record," a respected former player and official told The Sunday Age. "It's such a small world, football."
Like several other well-placed sources who confirmed the story, he made it clear that the game's unwritten code of silence was in this case reinforced with corporate spin and implied threats of reprisals against anyone who broke ranks.
The perceived risk of lawsuits has smothered all but the most oblique references to the mysterious medical emergency that could have ended with the player coming home in a coffin. Instead, he spent several days in hospital before being able to travel - and did not rejoin his teammates.
There are potent reasons for such an explosive scandal to stay "in club". The AFL and its 16 clubs have much at stake: multimillion-dollar sponsorships could evaporate if the lucrative AFL "brand" is damaged with one burst of bad publicity. And publicity could not get much worse than exposure of what really happened in that Las Vegas hospital five months ago.
On the record, players and club officials go along with the club's cryptic explanation dismissing the incident as a routine medical matter. Off it, insiders have told friends and relatives their man overdosed.
It fits a pattern of misbehaviour by AFL players and a tendency for clubs to cover up for those considered too valuable to lose - at the expense, sometimes, of lesser lights axed to protect sponsorships and the game's lucrative brand image.
The spectre of substance abuse hangs over the Las Vegas episode as it hangs over other strange incidents - the arrest, for instance, of Geelong's Steve Johnson in Wangaratta this year after worried householders called police when he staggered into their yard late at night and allegedly tried to drink from a bottle of suntan oil on their patio.
Then there is the weird behaviour of Carlton's Brendan Fevola in attacking an Irish barman, recently eclipsed by Eagles midfielder Daniel Kerr's bizarre late-night attack on a Perth taxi driver outside a hospital where he had taken a friend from a nightspot after a sudden bout of illness. Kerr is unlucky like that — his girlfriend was already in hospital after suffering a seizure.
Kerr's erratic lifestyle is notorious even in a city where footballers' excesses are mostly forgiven by adoring fans, some of whom run AFL clubs. The sort of fans who supported Brownlow medallist Ben Cousins when he left his car on a busy highway and bolted to avoid a booze bus — and when he was found unconscious near Melbourne's casino after another long night.
A young woman who went out with Kerr has told close friends she was shocked because he could not remember where he was — or who he was sleeping with — after he woke from "a big night".
Kerr asked her one summer night to pick him up from a party where he had been involved in a fight. When she arrived he looked at her blankly and said, "Who are you? Are you my lift?" She stopped seeing him after that.
Another regular at Perth's nightspots said Kerr "is constantly out of it and makes no secret of it. He sits around in bars and slurs his words. He doesn't recognise you from one day to the next."
One of Kerr's teammates narrowly escaped being caught in a police raid on the Red Sea bar on December 16 last year, where he had been drinking with members of the Coffin Cheaters bikie gang.
A well-known former Eagle was close to a champion dubbed "the Cocaine Kid" — and shared his taste in drugs.
"Girls I know used to go around to his house and he would be snorting coke off the coffee table," the woman said.
There was a sinister element to the big man's edgy lifestyle: neighbours saw people visiting him at all hours and were relieved when he moved out.
For all their on-field success, the Eagles have the worst reputation for drug and alcohol-fuelled misbehaviour. Other clubs have troubles — some of them inherited when they take on problem players "released" by original clubs — but the Eagles are notorious for flying too high.
"Drugs are rife at West Coast," a former club official declares. "At first the club didn't want to believe it. Now they say, 'Our blokes do it but they're no worse than any other club'. They are kidding themselves."
One cocaine-using player told him more than half the team were "into it". Worse, at least two club stars were "into the super, whizzbang stuff" so heavily that their supplier gives them other drugs to mask the effects of post-game binges. The supplier, he says, is a supporter keen to trade A-list "party" drugs to rub shoulders with A-list players. The person is not, as some might assume, well-known Perth identity John Kizon, though Kizon's socialising with players has long caused heartburn for the club.
West Coast was warned about the Kizon connection in 2001 when a police source told the club of taped conversations linking Brownlow medallist Ben Cousins and the since-disgraced Michael Gardiner with underworld figures. (Gardiner was sacked by the Eagles after causing a high-speed car crash while drunk.)
The charismatic and calculating Kizon, a convicted heroin trafficker and former boxer from Fitzroy, was a friend of the late Alphonse Gangitano — he flew to Melbourne to be a pallbearer at his funeral after Gangitano was shot in early 1998 — and is close to the powerful Coffin Cheaters gang.
In Perth he is admired by some, feared by many. It was inevitable he would make contact with local heroes the Eagles. Gangsters and stars often find each other.
In grand final week 2001, police saw Kizon meet Gardiner and Cousins at the Crown Casino complex; the three drank together at Fidel's Cigar Bar later that night.
Despite warnings, the two players did not distance themselves from Kizon; they were seen drinking with his Melbourne friends after an Eagles-Carlton game in early 2002.
The Carlton connection is interesting. The Moran family, which lost three members in Melbourne's underworld war, was closely connected to Carlton for three generations.
One of the Blues' great finals players reputedly played under the influence of drugs — "his eyes would be rolling around like mad", recalls a contemporary — and later became a dealer among younger players. He saw a Carlton player at a nightclub during the finals in the late 1990s and, while commiserating with him for being dropped from the side, slipped the embarrassed player some drugs. He is still reputed to deal to players and is not the only one.
Three years ago, Carlton recruits Laurence Angwin and Karl Norman were exiled from AFL football for turning up to a morning "recovery" session under the influence of ecstasy. Angwin now plays in Cairns, Norman in country Victoria.
Carlton is quick to discredit Angwin's claims that AFL players in Melbourne introduced him to ecstasy. "There would have been eight blokes (Carlton players) there that day who wouldn't have passed a test. Five out of the nine in the leadership group couldn't make eye contact with us when they called us in because they'd been out with us," he said.
Angwin's point is backed by a former AFL coach of impeccable character and high standing. He tells the story of a Crows star (with reputed shady connections) taking a fishing tackle box on a team trip. Inside were not hooks and sinkers, just dozens of brightly coloured pills. Drugs.
That might disappoint some club officials, but it won't shock them. They are now coping with a relentless rise in drug use and clubs are getting nervous.
There already is a quiet move to reverse the collateral damage done by the push against drinking. A former coach says some clubs are quietly reviving the practice of having a few drinks after a game, just like the old days.
But it's hard for some to go back after walking the wild side. One All-Australian player who made too much of his days in the sun boasted to a club official: "You haven't lived until you've had (a beauty queen) snort coke off your d---." The beauty is doing well, the player's career is in ruins.
http://www.theage.com.au/news/natio...1173478727321.html?page=fullpage#contentSwap2
Whos our fisherman?
