Fev: In My Own Words

by Brendan Fevola

  Those feelings were pushed to the back of my mind, however, when we—the mighty Lions—started the 2010 premiership season with four straight wins. Vossy looked like a genius as Browny and I teamed up to kick a series of big scores. We booted eight goals between us in our round 1 win over West Coast at the Gabba, and we backed that up with another good show when we hosted Carlton on the night of Easter Thursday in round 2. In the lead-up to the clash with the Blues, the footy world seemed infatuated with the Fev versus Carlton story. Everyone had their say, including motormouth and former Lions player Jason Akermanis, who said, ‘Michael Voss will be picking Fev’s brain regarding his ex-Carlton teammates. I’m not sure what Michael will find in there but it’s worth having a look anyway.’ It was typical of ‘Aker’ to be a smart-arse, but I just tried to ignore all the commentary that filled the airwaves and papers before the match. The Lions didn’t let me talk to the media that week, as Vossy didn’t want me to get distracted from the game. He was already worried that my focus had been diverted by Woman’s Day’s decision to publish a photo of the person I’d had the affair with, which people wrongly assumed I had distributed. I’m not going to elaborate on when or where that photo was taken, or how it got into the public domain, but I can categorically guarantee that I didn’t play a role in it being published in that magazine.

  Anyway, the distractions proved to be a non-issue when we came back from being a goal down at three-quarter time to beat Carlton by 19 points. I had been so nervous the afternoon before the game that Browny had invited me over to his place for a chat and a coffee. He made me a cappuccino—Browny bloody loves his coffee machine—and we played a few games of pool. Simon Black, who is a great bloke, came over as well. A couple of cappuccinos and some friendly competition at the pool table subsequently became our regular pre-game routine, because it paid off on that first occasion when Browny kicked seven goals and I booted three. Our combined tally now stood at eighteen goals in two matches. It was happy days. I gave Ratts a bit of cheek when I saw him as he was heading to his press conference after the game, which he didn’t take too well. I suppose he was still pissed off that my behaviour had forced him to sack his best forward. He was probably also shitty that Carlton had lost another winnable game at the Gabba.

  Dad came to Brisbane for those first two games. In fact, I think he came up for every game I played at the Gabba. Given so few of their boys are from Queensland, the Lions turn on the hospitality when the parents or siblings of their players go up there to watch a match. Dad still raves about how well he was looked after by the club. He especially loved the pre-game drinks that were put on for the families of the players at the Pineapple Hotel, a couple of blocks from the Gabba. He got on the frothies there with a heap of the other fathers and I think he enjoyed those sessions far more than any of the functions he’d attended while I was at Carlton.

  Browny and I enjoyed another brilliant outing when we beat Port Adelaide at AAMI Stadium in round 3. He was universally declared best-on-ground after booting seven goals, while I chipped in with three and generally won heaps of the ball. ‘The Brownie and Fev show brought back memories of the club’s golden era, between 2001 and 2003, when it claimed three consecutive premierships,’ wrote Jesper Fjeldstad in his match report in the Adelaide Advertiser. We had now kicked twenty-eight goals between us in three games.

  8 May 2010: Brendan playing for the Brisbane Lions during the Brisbane v Fremantle AFL match at the Gabba. (Newspix/Darren England)

  However, in the days after the win against the Power, my private life unravelled yet again. Despite the counselling sessions I’d attended in 2009, my gambling habit had become a full-blown gambling addiction. I had a lot of spare time when we first moved to Queensland, so I often wasted hours and hours by getting on the punt. It was a fucked situation. I won $365,000 one day and then lost it the next day. Once I had $20,000 on a horse and didn’t even watch the race. I just went and did something else, then rang up a mate to find out what had happened. When he told me it had lost, I didn’t give a shit about it. I really didn’t care about the races at all. I was just bored and dumb. Punting was just a compulsive thing. I got the excitement, the rush of adrenaline, from spending the $20,000 rather than watching the race. Once I’d experienced that hit of excitement, I wandered off and did something else. I treated money like it wasn’t real. It was like nothing had really happened.

  I wish I had thought about it more at the time, but I just didn’t. My losses kept mounting, and the shit really hit the fan when the bookies eventually started asking for their money back. When they started to worry about whether I could settle my debts or not, they sent a couple of their heavy hitters around to threaten me. That was pretty scary. I won’t go into it, but it was very frightening stuff. My entire wage for the 2010 season—a sum of more than $700,000—ended up going straight to the bookies, most of it to a bloke on the Gold Coast, and that basically bankrupted Alex and me. We had to sell four of our six properties, including our new home in Brisbane. Getting rid of the houses didn’t actually leave us with any more money. It just meant that we no longer had to worry about the mortgages on them.

  My gambling addiction left us with literally no money. Alex reached breaking point when she went to buy groceries one day and found out that we did not have even $1 in our account. She couldn’t deal with it anymore, so she packed the kids up and moved back to Melbourne. I was so flat after that. It was terrible. It was after Alex went back to Victoria that I decided to reveal my gambling addiction to the public. I admitted to the addiction in an interview on Fox Sports with one of my managers, Alastair Lynch. When I had realised I was in massive trouble with the bookies back in January, Lynchy was the first person I told. He was very supportive, which opened my eyes to the fact that people like him were keen to help me. He then set up a meeting with Vossy, who was also supportive of me. But I think my admission must have worried him a lot. He was pinning his coaching career on his decision to recruit players from other clubs, and now the biggest name he had signed was being engulfed by an off-field crisis. Lynchy and Vossy had encouraged me to see a highly renowned psychologist by the name of Dr Jon Steinberg, and I had had regular sessions with him. But even getting ongoing attention from a medical professional had not helped me kick my punting habit.

  Once Alex had gone, I moved into a house in Norman Park with Troy Selwood and Brent Staker, and they tried to support me as best they could. I was gutted to be away from the kids, but I spoke to Mia and Leni most nights on Skype. Leni kept asking me if I was going to play for Carlton when I came back to Melbourne. Sometimes Alex would put Lulu in front of the computer and she would grab at the screen. That made me even sadder because I was missing out on a lot of Lulu’s firsts. I was on my own in Brisbane when she got her first tooth, when she sat up for the first time. Some of the older Lions players gave me great support when I was missing the kids. Browny often invited me over to his place so I could muck around with his daughter, Olivia, and I went over to Amon Buchanan’s place a few times and played with his little kid. The club also let me fly down to Melbourne a day early when we played games there so I could spent some time with my kids.

  Still, what I went through was nothing compared to the dramas that my gambling addiction caused for Alex. She arrived back in Melbourne with no money at all, so she and the kids had to move in with her mum, which was very embarrassing. Alex’s chief source of income that year ended up being her appearance on the Channel 7 program Dancing with the Stars. She did really well and finished third, which meant that she was able to set up a new home for her and the kids. That brought some much-needed normality back into her life.

  Somehow, I was still able to play some good footy while all that gambling shit was going down. I kicked 4.4 in a Saturday night game against the Western Bulldogs the weekend after Alex left. We came back from 25 points down and won by 22. It was our fourth straight win and it lifted us to second on the ladder, behind St Kilda. After our win over the Bulldogs, many pu
ndits declared we were not only certainties to make the finals, but also a massive chance to win the flag. I’m sure Vossy would’ve been sitting on the couch at home saying to Donna, his wife, ‘I’m flying here. How good am I?’ However, things went to shit in a massive, unexpected way during the following three months—we lost seventeen of our remaining eighteen games. Injuries played a huge part in our downfall. By the sixth week of the season, Browny and I had both been struck down by groin problems that severely restricted us on the field. Many other players succumbed to injuries as well. The rock-hard surface at the Gabba was one factor, but our fitness staff needed to accept a lot of the blame. They made us too big over the summer. We were lifting huge weights and our bodies couldn’t handle it.

  The only glimmer of hope during our slow fade-out was when we beat Collingwood, the team that went on to win the premiership, by 8 points at the Gabba in round 10. I kicked four goals against the Magpies, including the match-winner, while Browny chipped in with four of his own. That night, a lot of Collingwood fans took delight in taunting me about my gambling addiction. One bloke leaned over the fence while I was having a shot at goal and waved a $50 note at me. I gave him a bit of a fright when I tried to grab it, but we both had a bit of a laugh about it once he was sitting back in his seat. A few weeks later, when we played the Bulldogs for the second time, Lindsay Gilbee kept running past me and saying, ‘How does it feel to be playing for free?’ I actually like Gilbs, so I just laughed at him.

  I booted another five snaggers in our 1-point loss to North Melbourne at Etihad Stadium in round 11. That haul propelled me to the top of the league’s goal-kicking table, where Fremantle’s Matthew Pavlich and I shared the lead in the race for the Coleman Medal, having both booted thirty-nine goals. However, apart from a four-goal haul against the Saints in round 15, my form fell away after that when my groin issue worsened. Both Browny and I spent time in Adelaide with a renowned physio as we tried to overcome our injuries, but we both needed at least a month on the sidelines to recover properly. Unfortunately, with the Lions falling fast, Vossy couldn’t afford to give us a rest.

  By the time my 200th game rolled around, I needed multiple painkilling injections just to get out on the field. The milestone came in our round 13 game against Richmond at the Gabba. Mum and Dad both came up for the game, as did Alex and the girls. In fact, I led the Lions onto the field with Mia and Leni running alongside me. That was a great moment. The club also allowed me to take part in the pre-game coin toss, which meant a lot to me because the opposing captain was my great mate Chris Newman. The game itself, however, was a disaster. The painkillers had been injected in the wrong spot and they numbed my whole leg. I was like Mick McGuane in that famous Collingwood game when the ball kept rolling off his foot. I finished the night with only seven disposals and one mark to my name as the Tigers enjoyed a 19-point win.

  I battled on for another month, but my season came to an abrupt halt when I suffered an additional groin injury during our 10-point loss to Melbourne at the Gabba in round 18. Afterwards, plenty of people were keen to write off my first year with the Lions as a disaster, but I thought that forty-seven goals in seventeen games was a reasonable effort, especially when you consider that we recorded only five wins. Once scans had revealed the severity of my groin problem, I flew to Sydney for treatment. The surgeon, a world-leading specialist in the field of sports injuries, said I had torn a tendon off the bone. It was one of the worst injuries of its kind that he had seen.

  After the operation, the Lions allowed me to start my four-month rehabilitation in Melbourne, where I hung out with mates and tried to see my kids whenever I could. But as my fears grew that my relationship with Alex was going to break down permanently, my mental state deteriorated. I started drinking heavily and going out a lot. I was photographed at a Chapel Street nightclub at 7.30 in the morning and shit went down in a big way when the Lions found out. They were furious. I was ordered back to Brisbane immediately.

  There was pressure on everyone at the Lions after our terrible campaign, which had ended with the Lions in thirteenth place. Vossy was particularly under the pump. His huge gamble on bringing in blokes from other clubs, like me, had backfired in a massive way. And our home crowds had dropped when we slipped down the ladder, which meant the club had lost a heap of money. The board and executive started grilling Vossy and everyone else in the football department about what they were going to do to fix things. Someone at the club—I’m pretty sure it wasn’t Vossy, who I had great respect for, and still do—decided that I had been cut too much slack during the season when it came to spending extra days in Melbourne. As a result, chief executive Michael Bowers told me I had to stay in Brisbane for much of the off-season, saying that he didn’t trust me to get my body right unless I was coming to the club on a regular basis. The saga made me angry. Under the players’ collective bargaining agreement, I was actually entitled to do whatever I wanted, and what I wanted was to spend time back home with Alex and the kids. That was when my relationship with the club started to fray.

  One of my few good memories from that period was spending Mad Monday with Browny. That was when I got to see the big fella’s leadership at its best. Before mobile phones came along, as a footballer you could have a good time and not worry. But these days, when you go out, people try to provoke you, to set you up. They might push someone into you, then if you push back they’ll take a photo and threaten to send it to a paper. Chris Judd said to me one day that the thing that’s going to ruin the lives of people in the public spotlight, like footballers, is the mobile phone. It’s basically a weapon of extortion. Anyway, that was why Jonathan Brown had set a Mad Monday rule that no-one was allowed to take his phone along. Big Browny stood up at the start of the day and said, ‘I’m the only one who’s allowed to have a phone. If you need to use it for an emergency, you have to speak to me first.’ Then, when we had our first drink, he stood up again and said, ‘Righto, stand up if you’ve got your mobile phone.’ Four blokes stood up and he stared straight at them. ‘What did I say? No fucking mobile phones.’ The blokes had to hand over their phones then scull a beer. Browny had so much respect among the group. He’s one of the best blokes I’ve ever met, a big cuddly bear.

  I was back in Melbourne when Collingwood beat St Kilda in the Grand Final replay and won the flag. I felt so jealous when I watched Dane Swan and his teammates collect their premiership medals. If things had gone my way during trade week the year before, if Eddie McGuire had gotten his way, I would have been part of that team. But now I was contracted to a club that had fallen into disarray.

  Little did I know it, but I was also on the verge of being thrown out of the AFL completely. That scenario arose when I was accused of exposing myself to a woman at a footy clinic in Brisbane. Having such an accusation levelled against me was devastating. Although I repeatedly pleaded my innocence, I was suspended indefinitely by the club, which I thought was a disgrace. Whatever happened to being innocent until proven guilty? The woman had made up her story, so I was soon cleared by parallel investigations run by Queensland Police and the AFL. I was relieved when the findings were handed down. But my suspension from the club severely damaged my already tense relationship with the Lions’ administration. I thought they were out to get me because they didn’t want to pay my big salary again in 2011.

  My suspension from the club was lifted in time for me to take part in a trip to China in October to play an exhibition game against Melbourne in Shanghai. I viewed the trip as a good chance to get away with the boys. But a couple of days before we were due to depart, my maternal grandmother, Faye Mowat, became gravely ill. I didn’t know whether I should go to China or stay home. Then I visited Faye and kind of said goodbye to her, and afterwards Mum encouraged me to go on the trip. Faye died while I was in the air on my way to Shanghai. She was one of the best people I have ever met. She and my grandfather had been together for sixty-eight years, since they were fourteen years old. Her death upset me greatly and I h
ad a shit time over in China. I couldn’t even play in the game because I was still recovering from my groin injury. So I just got pissed. I didn’t give a fuck about anything or anyone.

  The Shanghai excursion was followed by a trip to Hong Kong, during which I continued to drink my troubles away. As the pre-season neared, I was in a bad way. I knew I had to pull myself together to keep my career as a professional footballer alive. Yet I felt so lonely, and that feeling of loneliness made me angry. It was a toxic mix. My life unravelled to such an extent that by my thirtieth birthday—20 January 2011—I was in the Greenslopes Private Hospital.

  16 IT’S ALL OVER

  Michael Voss and the Lions’ football manager, Dean Warren, came to see me a couple of times at the New Farm Clinic, to which I’d returned once the floodwaters of the Brisbane River had receded. Despite all the dramas of the preceding months, which had culminated in my being locked up at the Brisbane watchhouse on New Year’s Eve, they seemed supportive of me. As a result, I began training in a park next to the clinic. I did a lot of running there and also spent hours on an exercise bike. After a couple of weeks of full-on exercise, I’d convinced myself that I was right to play AFL footy again. But back at the club, people were already looking for ways to cut me loose. I’m led to believe that on Friday 18 February, the Lions’ new chairman, Angus Johnson, acting chief executive Steve Wright and Dean Warren met with the AFL to see if they could sack me but not have the entire payout counted in the salary cap. According to a report published in the Age, AFL chief executive Andrew Demetriou and football operations manager Adrian Anderson were both at the meeting. When they agreed that only half of my payout would be counted in the 2011 salary cap, my career with the Lions was as good as over.