I received the shattering news when Vossy and Dean paid me a visit on the evening of Sunday 20 February. They sat me down and told me that I had been sacked by the club. I tried to change their decision by offering to play out the season in the reserves. I also offered to have behavioural clauses inserted into my contract, but it was to no avail. An hour or so later, everyone knew what had happened when the Lions released a statement to the media.
The decision to terminate Brendan’s contract was reached by the board of the Lions at a special meeting conducted this afternoon, having taken into account the views of the club’s administration and football departments, as well as the need to protect and uphold the culture and reputation of the club.
The grounds for termination were that Brendan had engaged in serious or wilful misconduct through persistent breaches of his obligations as a player to the club.
The club has therefore lost confidence in his ability to meet his obligations as a player due to these persistent breaches. The timing of this decision was based on medical advice. Brendan was informed of the decision this evening.
I don’t blame Vossy or Dean for my sacking. I still have the utmost respect for both those men. I think the decision was totally made by the board, which was worried that I was damaging the reputation of the club. Either way, it was a heartbreaking moment in my life.
My sacking was the last word on Vossy’s failed push to trade his way to a premiership. Thinking back about what happened in Brisbane, Vossy wanted to conjure another flag, particularly for Browny and Blacky. But it wasn’t as if those blokes had gone through their careers on the bottom of the ladder. They’d already won three premierships. It was probably a bit selfish to risk the reputation of the club just to try and win one more.
A number of people were livid that I was sacked while in a mental institution. The AFL Players’ Association was particularly scathing about the situation. But their outrage didn’t help me get my job back. Only seven months after I had led the race for the Coleman Medal, I had been cast into the football wilderness. The only positive thing to come out of the whole sorry saga was that Lynchy and the other members of my management group forced the Lions to pay out the remaining two years on my contract in full. That was a brilliant effort and I will always be thankful to Lynchy for that.
Following my sacking, I decided to stay at the New Farm Clinic for a bit longer and work harder to deal with my problems. The clinic had talks on various issues that you could attend and one of them was about depression. I went along and stood up and told everyone about some of the mental issues I had battled during my life. Then the lady who was running the talk explained to me that I ticked all the boxes for depression. As we spoke further about what it meant to have depression, and how you have to manage it because you can’t cure it, a weight lifted off my shoulders. I knew I had to open up and properly address my issues. After that, I spent a lot of time coming to grips with the revelation that I was suffering from depression. I started learning how to talk about serious issues, rather than just putting on my lovable larrikin mask and bottling things up inside me—I had always portrayed myself as a very confident character, but really I had battled feelings of insecurity my whole life. I also learned how to listen properly to other people’s points of view. I became good friends with a number of the other patients. They had amazing stories to tell about overcoming problems that were far more serious than mine.
I was at the New Farm Clinic for sixty-six days in all. Towards the end of my stay, Alex had started to become really concerned about my health. Sometimes they gave me so many drugs that I would ring her and say the same thing fifty times. Alex began to fear that I was becoming institutionalised. She pleaded with me to check myself out and come back to Melbourne. To be honest, I can see now how people do get institutionalised in those sorts of places, because it did start happening to me. I didn’t want to go home. I became hooked on the routine of the place, and I didn’t want to return to the outside world and face up to my many problems. But Alex kept insisting that I had to get out of there.
I finally checked out of the clinic on Monday 7 March. A couple of days later I did an interview with Craig Hutchison on The Footy Show, in which I dropped a number of bombshells. I detailed my struggle with depression, and I also spoke about that night in late 2010 when I’d thought about killing myself. Looking back now, I can see how desperate and dramatic I was at the time, and maybe I shouldn’t have told the media about it. But I also wanted to show the footy world that I was now keen to take some positive action. ‘I want to play footy, have fun, be a good father, be a good husband to my wife and do all the right things,’ I said. Plenty of people doubted the sincerity of my comments when I was discovered playing poker at Crown Casino a day later, but my gambling issues never revolved around poker. Sure, I shouldn’t have returned to the casino then—boredom was the main reason I’d gone there—but I was truly serious about wanting to be a good father and husband again.
In exchange for the interview I’d given them, The Footy Show agreed to give me two return business-class airfares to the United States. I had asked for the plane tickets because I wanted to spend a few days with my brother Jason in a place where no-one knew me. So we went to Los Angeles for a week. It was a great little break and I returned in a really good frame of mind. I later did another paid television appearance, this time on Channel 7’s Sunday Night program. Writer and broadcaster Peter FitzSimons interviewed Mum, Alex and me for his story. He was a seriously annoying bloke. He tried to make the interview all about him and I walked out in the middle of it. We all thought his conduct was a disgrace.
My managers weren’t happy when I did those high-profile interviews so soon after checking out of rehab. Lynchy and Peter Blucher were also angry with me when I took off to America. In late March, after we’d had another disagreement over where I was going to play footy in 2011, we decided to go our separate ways. Despite our falling out, I will always be thankful for all the work Lynchy and Peter did for me. They helped me when I was at rock bottom.
I started to get my life back on track when I went to live in Melbourne’s south-eastern suburbs with long-time family friend Shane Newman—Chris’ brother—and his wife, Michelle. Despite everything that had happened to me, they took me in like I was their son. It was like living back at Mum’s. Michelle cooked for me and did my washing, and they didn’t make me pay rent or anything like that. Having their support was a great relief because if I’d had to live by myself, who knows what might have happened. They gave me the platform upon which I could start rebuilding my life.
Things kept falling into place in the weeks after I’d moved in with Shane and Michelle. Alex let me see the kids a few times, which was a massive boost, and I got a job working two days a week on Grubby and Dee Dee’s breakfast show on Gold FM. Around the same time, I also signed a deal to play a season in the VFL with the Casey Scorpions. The club’s chairman, Michael Jeffs, was the bloke who first contacted me and asked if I wanted to have a run around. I was still in rehab at the time and I was delighted that someone was keen to help me get back on the footy field. Casey’s home ground was only ten minutes’ drive from Shane and Michelle’s place, so it worked out beautifully.
When I first went to training at Casey, I was as fat as a house. I had stopped exercising in the weeks after the Lions had sacked me, and I was still taking medication, which made me look like I’d been stung by a thousand bees. Nevertheless, the Casey boys—the ones who played in the senior team every week—were great. They welcomed me into their group and we soon became really good mates. There was a problem, however, in that Casey’s AFL affiliate, the Melbourne footy club, was livid that Jeffsy had signed me. They felt that I would be a bad influence on their young recruits, who had to play with the Scorpions if they didn’t get a game with the Demons. It didn’t help when I was caught playing poker at Crown Casino. But I ignored the flak I was copping from the Demons and focused on training flat out during late March.
As the start of the VFL season neared, I was still overweight and down on confidence, so I decided to have a run with Narre Warren, the grassroots club at which my career had started way back in the late 1980s. Another reason I went back to Narre was because one of my best mates, Glenn Hamilton, was playing there. I knew it was going to be his last year of footy, so I was keen to help send him off in style.
I played in a practice match for Narre Warren against Noble Park on 2 April. A couple of thousand people turned up to see me take to the field for the first time since I’d injured my groin in the Brisbane Lions’ loss to Melbourne in round 18 the previous year. Playing for a suburban club on a suburban ground, only nine months after leading the race for the Coleman Medal, was a pretty strange experience. I looked at the cars parked up against the fence and thought, ‘Fuck, I shouldn’t be playing here.’ But it was my own fault. If I hadn’t kept stuffing up, I still would have been in the AFL. My best mate Chris Newman came along to watch me play, as did his Richmond teammate Shaun Grigg and my old man. Although they saw me boot the first two goals of the game, they also witnessed me getting sent off after I was involved in a scuffle just before the final siren. The Noble Park blokes had been niggling me throughout the match, and in the end I blew up and caused an all-in brawl. We all had a drink together afterwards, though, which is one of the great things about local footy. The crowd gave me heaps that day as well. ‘We need a forklift,’ one Noble Park supporter yelled when I hit the deck early on.
16 April 2011: In action during the Narre Warren v Berwick match. (Newspix/Tess Follett)
Two weeks later, I played in Narre Warren’s first-round game against Berwick. I kicked four goals, took a couple of strong marks and generally felt good. After that, I went back to the Scorpions. I had to start in their reserves team, but after one game I was elevated to the seniors. By that stage I had dropped 16 kilograms, although my improved fitness didn’t translate to instant success at that level. The fact that a heap of Melbourne players were parachuted into our team each weekend made playing VFL footy really hard. The Melbourne coaches would come to the games and continually take their blokes aside at the quarter breaks and talk to them while the rest of us stood around watching. It was a shit thing for team morale.
Another couple of quiet games for Casey had me doubting myself. I started worrying that I was too fat and slow to play decent footy again. But just when I needed a pick-me-up, the Scorpions had a bye, which meant that I was able to go and make another appearance for Narre Warren. That game for Narre, which was against Keysborough, was the turning point of my season. I kicked ten goals but, more importantly, I had heaps of fun. My performance convinced me that I still had the talent to be a top-line footballer. The following month I played my third game for Narre Warren, this time against Tooradin-Dalmore, and booted another ten goals. That had me up and about in a big way.
I ended up kicking forty-three goals in Casey’s last six home-and-away games. My best performance came when I slotted ten in our massive win over the Northern Bullants, Carlton’s VFL affiliate, a game in which I came up against a number of my former teammates. I started on Michael Jamison, who was coming back from injury. I remember being told that Brett Ratten had been interviewed on radio that morning and had said I wouldn’t kick a goal on Jamo. But I smashed him. I had six shots in the opening quarter and finished the first half with 5.3 to my name. At half-time, Jamo said to me, ‘I’ve had enough here mate. I’m done.’ He didn’t come back on for the rest of the game. Booting five goals on Jamison was a massive effort when you consider that he only narrowly missed out on being the All Australian full-back in 2011. My great mate Ryan Houlihan was also playing for the Bullants that afternoon, and after I kicked one of my goals I heard him yell out, ‘The big fella’s still got it!’ I shouted back, ‘I haven’t lost it. That’s not why I’m down here. I’m not down here because I can’t play.’ I knew that I was still good enough to play at the highest level. Sam Landsberger later wrote in the Herald Sun that I was ‘regarded as the best player outside the AFL by some distance’. I finished the VFL season with sixty-nine sausage rolls from seventeen games, and I was confident that an AFL club would give me another chance when the draft rolled around in November.
8 May 2011: Brendan and Brock McLean in action during the Northern v Casey match at Cramer St Oval. (Newspix/Travis McCue)
On the first weekend in October, I could only shake my head when Collingwood lost the Grand Final to Geelong. Their second key forward, Chris Dawes, had a shocker. I couldn’t keep the thought out of my head that I could have won the game for them. I did a heap of fitness work in the weeks after the Grand Final, inspired by the fact that I knew I was still good enough to play in the AFL. That year, I’d played on blokes who were still on AFL lists, and I’d beaten them, plus I was still only thirty years old. I played some more games in Darwin, kicking a few more bags of goals, and then nominated for the 2011 national and pre-season drafts.
I truly believed I was a big chance to be picked up in the national draft. And in the lead-up to it, a number of clubs said they were going to take me, which got my hopes up even more. The draft was held on a Thursday night up in Sydney and I watched it on TV. Most of the players drafted were kids, but a few old blokes got a call-up, including 29-year-old ruckman Orren Stephenson from North Ballarat, who was picked by Geelong. But no-one called out my name.
The pre-season draft, which was held in Melbourne on 13 December, was my last chance to get back on an AFL list. But although players who have been in the AFL system before are often selected in the pre-season draft, I knew it wasn’t going to happen for me. I didn’t even bother following the draft on the AFL website. I was sitting on my couch, Mum in a chair beside me, when the fact that I had not been picked was relayed on the TV news. Mum turned to me with a tear in her eye and said, ‘It’s all over.’ A touch over two years after winning the Coleman Medal and being named at full-forward in the All Australian team, I was now officially a has-been.
17 GOODBYE SPEECH
When I look back on my football career, I am proud of everything that I achieved. I know that some people like to say that I wasted my talent, but I don’t think that argument is entirely convincing. After all, I played 204 AFL games, kicked 623 goals, was selected in the All Australian team three times, and twice won the Coleman Medal.
However, I often think about the times early in my AFL career when the older blokes at Carlton retired. They’d get up in front of the players and coaches and start crying. Even the really tough blokes would cry, and the blokes who had been teammates with them for a long time would start crying too. They’d always say that your career goes so quickly. And it does. I’m finished now, and it feels like it just went ‘Bang!’ and then was gone. And I didn’t get a chance to give a goodbye speech. I got it given to me. That’s a huge regret, especially when I know that I could still cut it at the highest level. When I watched Carlton dominating Richmond in round 1 of the 2012 AFL season, I couldn’t help thinking, ‘I would’ve kicked a bag in this one.’
I still love footy. I played a game with Ryan Houlihan in Darwin in early 2012. We went through our old pre-game routine from the Carlton days, which was great. I want to keep playing for a few years yet, whether it’s in a bush league or back in the suburbs of Melbourne. Other than my family, footy is the thing I love the most. I’ll play for as long as I can because you’re a long time retired.
I have managed to get back together with Alex, which is a massive thing for me, and when it comes to the kids. I wouldn’t be where I am now if it wasn’t for Alex. The way she has pulled me into line and taught me stuff I didn’t know has stopped me from falling right off the cliff. Alex is so smart when it comes to the way you talk and the way you present yourself. She has always tried her best to steer me in the right direction, especially when it comes to money. If I didn’t have her I wouldn’t have anything. I’d be broke because of the punt. We’ve still got a house and a farm at Pearcedale on the
Mornington Peninsula, so things are not too bad. Alex also has her own business going, which has given her a huge boost.
I don’t blame the bookies for what happened to so much of my money, because it was my fault. I didn’t have to gamble. The bookies never twist your arm and say put this much money on this horse. But what the bookies did by allowing me to bet on credit, that was wrong. They preyed on me when I was vulnerable. I think betting on credit should be banned.
Do I often look back and wish it was all different? No. I can’t change it, so why do that? Sure, I made a lot of mistakes during my footy career, but I try and remember the good times. Like when I won that game against Adelaide by kicking a goal from 50 metres out on the boundary. Or when I kicked eight goals and we beat Essendon after having been 48 points down. I’m proud of my footy career, and proud of my wife and kids. Things could have turned out better, but they also could’ve been much worse.
2 March 2012: Pictured with a disco ball in Melbourne, Victoria after confirming he was to appear in the new series of 'Dancing with the Stars'. (Newspix/Stephen Harman)
What will I do in the future? I still hope to head over to the United States and have a crack at being an NFL punter. Why not have a go? That’s my attitude. But no matter what happens, I want my kids to be the focus of my life. I want to make the most of the fact that I can now go to their school sports days and their concerts. I couldn’t do that stuff when I was playing professional footy. I suppose, after everything that has happened to me since I first walked into the Carlton footy club in late 1998, I want to grow up with them.
Fev: In My Own Words Page 23
