Fletch

by Dustin Fletcher

  To play as long as Fletch has you have to be absolutely passionate about the game, but equally important I think is the fact that Fletch has always felt comfortable in his own skin.

  In the early seasons he used to play one-on-one cover defensively really well. As time has gone by he’s been able to hang on to that skill and read the game as well as anyone while also adjusting his own skill-set to the different demands of the era. Only the great players are able to do that.

  Aerobically he’s not an amazing runner – give Fletch a 3–4 kilometre time trial in training and he’ll probably finish last – but in terms of ability to be able to smother a footy, lay a tackle, get a hand in, try to smother another and keep pressure on . . . well, that’s as good as anyone I have ever seen.

  How many times have you watched the opposition think they’ve kicked the ball well and then found yourself saying, ‘Why the hell did they kick it straight to Dustin Fletcher?’ That’s why he’s a freak. He reads it so precisely that he’s just there. He zones off beautifully, stretches out and gets it.

  He will walk away from the game at some stage but for him it’s not a case of, ‘I want to stay as long as I can to see Dustin Fletcher’s name just get bigger and bigger.’ For Fletch, it’s more about chasing that last bit of exceptional play, that feeling of winning a premiership for a club you love.

  That’s why he just wants to keep going. It is not for his personal pride – you never, ever get that selfishness from Fletch – it is always about wanting to see his teammates and the club do really well.

  When he does retire his highlight packages will be all about tackle one, smother one, chase one, go again. His third, fourth and fifth efforts are as good as an elite midfielder and that’s remarkable.

  I always think about how when I was 13 my dad took my brother and me to watch Essendon against Carlton in the Granny in 1993 when the 17-year-old Fletch played on Kernahan. We were saying, ‘Wow, how good is this?’ Then I got drafted and went to the Bombers and I played 14 years with them, every one of them alongside Fletch. Now I’m retired but I’m still going to the games . . . and still watching Dustin Fletcher play. Work that out!

  CHAPTER 16

  BLACKEST DAY

  James Hird looked concerned. And that made me more concerned.

  I was watching on TV the press conference that had been urgently called after Essendon had asked the AFL to investigate concerns about the potential inappropriate use of supplements during the 2012 season.

  We knew something had been going on behind the scenes as we’d heard rumours about some accounting anomalies involving Stephen Dank. Things weren’t adding up and when we returned to the start of pre-season he was only around briefly before his office was emptied. Meanwhile, the Weapon was in a dispute with the club about his future. He’d had his power base eroded following Danny Corcoran’s internal review of the fitness department’s operations the previous season.

  It was clear that the club was heading in a different direction, which, given how 2012 had ended, was really the only option. But none of us saw this coming.

  ‘I’m very disappointed – shocked is probably the best word,’ Hirdy said. ‘As a coach I take full responsibility for what happens in our footy department. If there have been goings-on within our football department that are not right, we want to know.’

  It wasn’t long before my phone started ringing. Most of the calls were from teammates who, like me, were desperately trying to find their training programs from last year. What had we been given?

  Two days later, on 7 February, I watched footage from another press conference. This one was in Canberra and involved politicians and sports leaders, including AFL boss Andrew Demetriou. The Australian Crime Commission was releasing its Drugs in Sport report, which had found widespread use of prohibited substances, including peptides, hormones and illicit drugs, in professional sport and highlighted links to organised crime. It was being hailed as the ‘blackest day in Australian sport’, and Essendon was smack bang in the middle of it.

  The club moved quickly, holding briefings for the players and their families to allay our fears, but the reality was they didn’t know if we’d been injected with illegal substances.

  With each week there seemed to be another revelation. The names of drugs we had allegedly used started to appear in the media, including the anti-obesity drug AOD-9604, thymosin beta 4, hexarelin and TA-65. We were even said to have used pig’s brain extract, and we’d allegedly taken mystery substances that had been exported from Mexican cartels. It was crazy. I spent a lot of time on the home computer looking up what these drugs were and the aftereffects of using them. Some of it was scary reading.

  While the players’ anger was initially directed towards the footy club for putting us in such a position, it was more focused on the Weapon, who’d been stood down immediately when the scandal broke, and Dank. But I always brought it back to the human element. I’d had a good relationship with Dank. We’d talked for hours about all sorts of things, and I simply couldn’t believe he would inject into my stomach something that would show up as a positive test. Surely a bloke is not going to do that.

  I felt sorry for Bruce Reid in particular. I’d known him for 30-plus years and trusted him explicably but our doctor had clearly not been kept in the loop and hadn’t been across everything that was going on. Reidy had never been a full-time employee of Essendon: he had his own practice and was generally at the club for only the three main training sessions each week. It was becoming apparent that Dank, who was a trained biochemist, had operated in such a secretive manner that not even the medical staff had known exactly what he was doing, and this lack of governance became the heart of the issue for the AFL.

  I just wanted to sit down with Dank for an hour and find out why he did what he did. I wouldn’t be angry and want to belt him or anything – I just wanted to hear from his own mouth what had been going on. No-one had seen him since he left the club other than on TV, when he did an interview with the ABC program Four Corners. While he maintained he hadn’t administered us with anything illegal, he repeatedly said Hirdy and the other coaches had been across everything he did. So the heat was on Hirdy.

  *

  The coach continued to hold his head high, and the way he came out to training and just went about business as normal was unbelievable. As a playing group we tried to do the same as we entered the 2013 season.

  It wasn’t easy, given that sometimes the media would be outside our houses. Week after week I couldn’t arrive at the club without a television camera being thrust into my face.

  My two sons would often come to recovery with me after games, but every time we’d pull in to the club there would be cameras so we’d have to find a secret way of getting in.

  The problem was that everywhere you went, everyone wanted to ask questions about the saga. It got beyond a joke when our wives and kids were getting quizzed about AOD-9604. I would hold my breath every day when I picked the boys up from school. If they weren’t their normal jovial selves, I knew why straight away. Soon, the questions would start again.

  ‘What has happened today?’ they’d ask. ‘What drugs are they saying you took today?’

  I found myself switching the radio off in the car or at least diving at it to try to turn the volume down when news breaks came over the air, because without fail the lead item would be the Essendon drugs scandal.

  I could control what my kids heard in that environment but there were times when it was impossible. For a while it seemed a day didn’t go past where I wasn’t heckled by someone in a passing car.

  ‘Drug cheat,’ would be yelled in my direction.

  I would just put my head down and keep walking. If the boys were with me, I’d tell them to ignore it and when we got home I’d again reassure them that I didn’t take anything that wasn’t right.

  Our only sanctuary was actually inside the 50 metres by 50 metres of the football club. That is where we felt as one. A lot of energy was spen
t sitting around the locker room and talking about what was happening. Many of the guys just wanted to get stuff off their chest and find out if their mates were feeling the same way. Through it all we found a way to train and get ourselves in impressive shape for the start of the new season, but the emotion of what was happening was always close to the surface.

  At the club’s season launch our chairman, David Evans, made a passionate speech: ‘I understand the way you look at me tonight, looking for reassurance our beautiful place will be okay. I promise you that it will be. The hurt of the past few weeks is still raw, but it is this room that gives me strength – given how you all have stood behind the club in its hour of need.’

  The emotion spilled over even more in the season opener against Adelaide at Football Park. After starting like a team that had something on its mind, we found a way to get our game going in the second quarter and from then on we blitzed the Crows, kicking 17 goals to eight after quarter-time to win by 35 points. Fittingly our captain, Jobe Watson, who had won the 2012 Brownlow Medal, kicked the final goal of the night and was mobbed, with pure relief flooding from all of us.

  The next week we rolled through Melbourne in devastating fashion, winning by 148 points with Stewart Crameri kicking six from full-forward. Ruckman Tom Bellchambers got four while Watson had 38 possessions and kicked three goals.

  I pulled up tight in the abductor after the game but the events of the next few days meant there was no way I was going to miss out on the trip to Perth to play Fremantle. I wanted to play for a mate. It had come out in the media that Dank was claiming he’d injected Hirdy with hexarelin, which WADA had banned for players in 2004. Our coach flatly denied this but the world was turning on him, with league chief Demetriou suggesting Hirdy should think about standing down.

  I had never seen Hirdy or any of our other coaches injected.

  In the lead-up to the game I had more than a dozen phone calls from ex-teammates who were obviously friends with Hirdy and were concerned for his welfare. There was a common theme in their messages: you have to win this game for him.

  I had found myself gravitating more towards my friend over recent times. Instead of walking past his office, I’d knock on the door and go in just to chew the fat. More often than not we wouldn’t talk about the saga, but rather find another subject that would make him laugh. But if I had a question about the investigation, he would tell it straight and I was the same if he wanted to know the feeling of the playing group or something like that. I definitely had his trust and he had mine.

  He was very professional at all times with the players. If he sensed the group was down he would delay the start of training or even suggest calling it off.

  ‘Do you actually feel like going out to training or do you want to just sit here and talk to each other?’ Hird said.

  His ability to read the mood of the group was exceptional and there was no doubt he had our full support.

  Whether Hirdy considered quitting or how much pressure the league put on him to do so we never found out, because he always shielded the playing group as best he could from the black cloud that was hanging over us.

  It looked like the build-up had been over the top given the half-time scoreline: we’d kicked just one goal and the Dockers’ lead was 36 points. We eventually got going in the third, although I was subbed off midway through as my leg played up again. Five goals to two points got us back to within three points.

  In an epic final term we found a way. It was hard to watch from the bench, but halfway through the quarter we finally got in front when goal sneak Nick Kommer took two bounces and ran into an open goal. A minute later Dyson Heppell got another goal and in the blink of an eye we were 10 points up. Fremantle struck back and it was a real armwrestle; with 90 seconds remaining the scores were level.

  But this one was clearly meant to be ours. Ruckman Paddy Ryder somehow got hold of the ball, which had been bobbling around frantically in the forward pocket. His left-foot snap over his shoulder from 20 metres out was perfect and put us a goal up with virtually no time remaining. Fremantle won the crucial centre clearance and went long forward, but luckily only scored a behind. All we had to do now was execute a perfect kick-in. That didn’t happen and the Dockers again surged and with 20 seconds remaining the ball ended up in the hands of Chris Mayne. He’d already kicked three goals for the night and somehow had found space – but his rushed left-foot snap from 15 metres slammed into the post.

  Those football gods who’d abandoned us over the previous six weeks had returned. When the final siren sounded I sprinted on to the field to join in the celebrations. Even though I hadn’t played out the whole game, the emotion of the occasion was something I hadn’t experienced before on a football field. We hadn’t won at Subiaco much in my career, and to come back from six goals down against the backdrop of what had happened in the lead-up made it one of the best wins of my career.

  I’d never seen Hirdy so emotional and he thanked us after we sang the theme song the loudest I’d heard it in many years. ‘Anything is possible if you continue to play with that hunger and train with that hunger,’ he said. ‘I’m so proud of you. I thank you so much. I personally . . . just thank you, thank you.’

  Hirdy spoke with ASADA investigators the following week, with the player interviews set to start soon. My quad issue cost me three weeks on the sidelines and in my absence we continued on our winning way and sat on top of the ladder, with one of those wins an impressive 46-point victory over Collingwood on Anzac Day.

  In the week of my return against Geelong in Round 7, the focus again shifted off-field at Windy Hill with the release of the findings of the club’s own investigation, which had been done by former Telstra boss Ziggy Switkowski. It wasn’t good reading.

  ‘There was a disturbing picture of a pharmacologically experimental environment never adequately controlled or challenged or documented within the club,’ Switkowski said. It was becoming apparent that the players may have been the guinea pigs in something that was a lot bigger and more questionable than we’d all thought.

  The fallout from the saga was about to begin. Two weeks later our chief executive, Ian Robson, resigned at yet another press conference at Windy Hill. ‘We now know that a lot happened at this club in 2012 that just should not have happened,’ he said. ‘We let down our players and their families; how seriously we let them down is still a matter of investigation. There is no excuse in not knowing, and as CEO, I am accountable and I accept that accountability.’

  Cracks were appearing everywhere. Robson had been one of the people who’d regularly told us in meetings that everything would be all right, that we didn’t take anything illegal and that the investigation would not impact on our futures.

  Now, he was gone. Who was next?

  *

  While off-field the club continued to take hit after hit, on the field we had the makings of a seriously good team. The addition of Brendon Goddard from St Kilda as part of the new free-agency system had been massive. He was an outstanding footballer whose preparation, leadership and versatility made us a significantly better team.

  And we unearthed another exciting talent in Round 11 against Carlton, when Joe Daniher – the son of Anthony, whom I had replaced at fullback 20 years earlier – made his debut. At 201 centimetres he was a mobile key forward who could play in the ruck, and comparisons to ‘The Big Fish’, Paul Salmon, were already being made.

  That game also signalled the coming of age of another youngster, Jake Carlisle. He was being groomed as a tall defender, but given we were 31 points down in the third quarter, Hirdy changed some things around and threw him forward in what was a match-changing move. Earlier, Carlton forward Jarrad Waite had torched us for seven goals, but with Carlisle marking everything – he had 13 for the night – we reduced the margin to 14 points at three-quarter time. When another impressive youngster, Jake Melksham, kicked his second goal of the night with 11 minutes remaining we were in front. The Blues rallied before Jason Win
derlich took a brilliant intercept mark in the forward pocket then quickly short-passed to Melksham, who was 45 metres out. He went back and nailed his third goal of the night – we’d kicked five of the last six goals – and with 90 seconds remaining we were back in front. We pushed everyone back into the Carlton forward line and again it was Carlisle who stood up, taking a brilliant pack mark on the last line to win the game.

  An easy win over the Gold Coast the following week left us third on the ladder at the halfway mark of the season. My groin was playing up so I sat out the next couple of games, but while I was being quiet, the drugs scandal that had been simmering along in the background was ignited again after an appearance by Jobe Watson on the Fox Footy show On the Couch.

  Jobe’s development as a footballer and as a person had been incredible. When he arrived he was a chubby forward who’d played mainly private school football. I’m not sure if it was his father, Tim, who got in his ear, but after drifting through his first few years he put in a massive pre-season and totally turned his career around. He lost a lot of weight, mainly through boxing, and improved his body shape and kicking. Jobe had always had the brain, footy smarts and good hands but now he had an engine.

  All credit goes to him because he had to follow in his dad’s footsteps and there was a fair bit of pressure on him. I knew that better than most. To now be a Brownlow Medallist, three-time best and fairest winner, two-time All-Australian and captain of the football club was pretty amazing. He was also a very intelligent, deep thinker so when he was asked about AOD-9604 on the TV show he gave a straight answer.

  ‘I signed that consent form,’ Watson said. ‘My understanding after it being given through Bruce Reid and the club [was] that I was receiving AOD. [I believed] that it was legal at the time and that’s what I was told I was being given.’ There had been ongoing debate about the anti-obesity drug: just two months earlier WADA had issued a statement saying it was banned, and despite this Dank was claiming he’d been advised it was not an illegal substance.