We had another trip to Subiaco a few days later and I stayed home and watched it on TV. I was horrified when Jobe was booed by the West Coast Eagles fans; he had done nothing wrong. It came as no surprise then that he took it upon himself to win the game, producing a best-on-ground performance of 29 possessions and two goals to get us another emotion-charged victory at Subiaco, this time by seven points.
We’d held it together remarkably well as a playing group despite all the challenges, but there was another big one looming: marathon interrogation sessions by ASADA and AFL investigators.
CURTIS STONE
Best mate at school, now famous international chef
Before we met and went to school together, Dustin and I played tennis against each other, me for East Keilor and him for Essendon. We were young kids but I remember Kenny Fletcher standing up against the fence giving the seven-year-old Fletch directions as we played. That’s Kenny for you.
As Fletch and I got to know each other at school we hung out more and became really solid mates. There were three or four of us and we were best friends. Dustin as a kid was more a ‘wanderer’ than a loner because he had loads of mates and was a popular kid. But you never really knew what was coming next with him. With Fletch you always expected the unexpected.
Neither of us were the most studious pupils. We got up to some stuff but Dust would always be the one to get away with it. He was so crafty in the way he’d remove himself at exactly the right time!
I can’t imagine what it was like for Dust to have his dad at the school. We all liked Kenny Fletcher – he was the PE teacher so what’s not to like? – but it must have been challenging for Dust. Kenny is a really interesting fella – super loyal and nice, but intense and no holds barred. I saw him not long ago up at the school, coaching the kids, hanging out for one more premiership. He can’t let go . . .
When we were in Year 9, I got picked in the seniors and Dust didn’t. It became my claim to fame: ‘I got picked in the senior squad before Dustin Fletcher did!’ Now I think about it, it was probably Kenny pulling strings, keeping him back because he didn’t want his boy to get hurt.
We were still at school when Dust was picked for Essendon, aged 17. All of a sudden on the front page of the Herald Sun there’s a story on our mate as part of the Baby Bombers!
It was no surprise. Dustin was never the most graceful footballer, but he always did freakish, unimaginable stuff. He had God-given gifts and a knack to apply himself to do it. He was super-fast on the track and incredible on whatever court he walked onto. His abilities defied nature and if he’d set his mind to basketball or tennis, he’d still have been a superstar.
Our close friendship lasted all through school, but after Year 12 I went into cooking and by then Dustin was full-on into his footy. Early on we’d still get together and hang around those haunts of Essendon, carrying on with our usual shenanigans, but after that we had really different lives.
Deep and meaningful conversations with Dust are few and far between but he told me once: ‘We’ll be mates forever, Stoney, no matter what.’ It’s true. Even if we haven’t spoken for a couple of years, we’d drop everything to help one another. That’s how good a bloke and how loyal a friend Dust is.
I remember when we were about 22, Dust was into his fourth or fifth season with the Bombers and I was back in Australia after years travelling, telling him how exciting it was in the Greek Islands and those sorts of places. I remember seeing a little twinkle in his eye. He said, ‘I really can’t complain about my life but I don’t have many options to do all that stuff like you do. I would love to, but I can’t’.
It occurred to me at the time that he was this close to giving up what millions of kids dream about – playing AFL – and saying: ‘You know what? I don’t need to do this.’ Dustin has always been a bit like that. He’s never been motivated by what most young guys are motivated by.
Truthfully, I think he doesn’t care that much about playing footy. Bizarre, I know. The football club wouldn’t like to hear that, but I genuinely think it’s true. Of course Dustin enjoys footy and yeah, he’s totally dedicated to it . . . but I reckon he could’ve taken it or left it from the start.
CHAPTER 17
PEPTIDE PAIN
The consensus among the team was that we were being made to feel like criminals. And that’s exactly how I felt from the moment I walked into the room at the AFL’s headquarters in Docklands.
Every day it had seemed there were another couple of players going in to be grilled. I had my manager, Michael Quinlan, with me and there were three investigators from ASADA and the AFL at the opposite end of the table. For the next four hours I was shown things I’d not seen before and heard things that rocked me to the core and left me basically in a state of shock. I had pieces of paper put in front of me that had my name on them and underneath a list of drugs I’d never heard of.
‘That’s the first time I’ve seen that,’ I said each time.
Then they produced a spreadsheet with more lists of drugs, most of which, again, I had not seen or heard of. They wanted me to tick off the ones I’d used and the ones I hadn’t. ‘I’m not going to tick off something I have never seen,’ I stated.
They grilled me about James Hird and Bruce Reid and also threw at me the names of people I didn’t know. It was a fishing exercise and I didn’t bite. When I was finally released, I was mentally drained. It had been one of the worst experiences of my life.
We were all just footballers. Football was our passion and our job. We hadn’t signed up for this.
The topic of conversation in the locker room was each player’s war stories about his interview. We needed to talk about it to someone, and the only people we could talk it over with were each other.
Unfortunately the saga claimed another major player when chairman David Evans resigned after he had a physical breakdown in the rooms after our 56-point loss to Hawthorn.
That really hit home for me, because when something like this starts to impact on people’s health and their family, it’s simply not right. David had noticeably lost a lot of weight in the months after the scandal broke and his close relationship with Hirdy had been tested. I’d always got on well with him, and generally on interstate trips we’d catch up for a drink and a laugh. He had a good heart and had done a lot of excellent things for the club during some tough times, so it was sad to see him go out this way.
What we were now all living under was the threat that the AFL was going to strip us of premiership points for bringing the game into disrepute. This had been officially flagged as a possibility and scared the hell out of the players. Was our impressive season going to amount to nothing? Was our shot at a premiership – we were fourth after 18 rounds – going to be taken away?
On 2 August news broke that the AFL was in possession of ASADA’s interim report. The black cloud was getting darker, and it was no surprise that two days later we put in one of our worst performances, going down by 79 points to Collingwood. I was struggling mentally and physically, with my nagging groin issue causing problems.
Our frustration boiled over the following week against West Coast, when it became apparent that as a group we’d fallen into a big hole. The spirit had been sucked out of us and we meekly gave up against an Eagles side that wasn’t even in finals contention, to the tune of 53 points, allowing them to kick 12 goals to three on our own home patch of Docklands Stadium. I vented my anger on young Eagle Jamie Cripps and stupidly copped another two-match suspension to add to my long charge sheet.
There were a million things running through my head. ASADA was maintaining that its investigation was ongoing and that players could still be served with infraction notices.
I wasn’t a drug cheat; none of us was. However, ignorance is no excuse. There had been cases in every sport around the world of people being banned for lesser offences than what we were being accused of.
Surely this couldn’t be the way it all ended.
On Tuesday 13 Au
gust the AFL announced that it was charging the Essendon Football Club, James Hird, Danny Corcoran, Bruce Reid and Mark Thompson with conduct likely to bring the game into disrepute. While this had been forecast, it was still a shattering blow when it became a reality.
Getting booted out of the finals was gaining momentum as a likely sanction. While we tried to focus on the football, it was incredibly tough and we lost our next match, to North Melbourne, by 45 points. There was a sense of pride the following week against Carlton, maybe because the narrative in the lead-up had been around it possibly being Hirdy’s last game as coach, with the AFL Commission to hand down its penalties three days later. Sparked by an inspired final quarter from David Zaharakis, we turned around a 20-point third-quarter deficit to win by six points. Zaharakis was the hero, snapping a goal with just 20 seconds remaining after two Carlton players collided with each other.
‘It just shows the courage and the heart of the players we’ve got,’ Hirdy said afterwards. ‘I think to come out and play that way after the week we’ve had is pretty amazing.’
I wasn’t in a good headspace during my two-week suspension, with a sense of inevitability about our season weighing everyone down. The first day of negotiations between the AFL and Essendon on the penalties went for 10 hours with no result. Deep down I thought we were still a 90 per cent chance to play in September, even though the constant speculation said otherwise. I was wrong.
At 8.30 pm on Tuesday 27 August the AFL Commission chairman, Mike Fitzpatrick, and CEO Andrew Demetriou delivered the bad news: Essendon had been banned from the 2013 finals. We’d been fined $2 million, and we’d been stripped of picks in the 2013 and 2014 drafts. Hirdy was suspended for a year, Bomber Thompson was fined $30,000 and Corcoran was banned from working in AFL for six months. Reidy’s case had been adjourned for another week.
I was in a state of disbelief. How could this have happened? It turned out Hirdy, who all along had maintained his innocence through the saga, had agreed to his suspension to save the club from even harder sanctions. I admired how he had kept his head high throughout the entire ordeal. He had stood up for what he and his family believed in. My take on it was that a number of people had made mistakes but he’d carried the bulk of it for both the Essendon Football Club and the AFL.
The thing that hurt the most was that so many people had let the players down. And there were so many questions. Why hadn’t the club done their checks before employing Dank? Why hadn’t someone been monitoring his program? And would we ever get the real answers? Since his TV interview at the start of the saga, Dank had remained quiet and was refusing to assist ASADA. I was still intrigued by what he would have to say if I got to sit down with him for an hour. I would certainly feel better about myself if I got some answers. There had nearly been an opportunity a month earlier when I’d seen him in the distance in Sydney while we were up there to play the Giants. A couple of us had gone down to the Opera House to have a coffee and he was actually having a drink with someone 15 metres away from where I was sitting. There was a big part of me that wanted to go up and speak to him, but I held back.
While my suspension was over, I still wasn’t right mentally to play the final game of the season against Richmond. Hirdy was replaced by assistant Simon Goodwin for the game, and it was supposed to be a significant personal milestone for me: I was scheduled to break Simon Madden’s club games record by playing my 379th against the Tigers. It could wait. I didn’t want my career to end on this note.
The thing about the whole scandal which drove me mad was that from a personal point of view, I don’t think it worked. I couldn’t talk on behalf of the other players, but if you asked me whether I was a better footballer for all the injections and substances I’d taken, I’d say, ‘I don’t think so.’
Rubbing salt into what was already a gaping wound was the fact our arch enemy, Carlton, who’d finished ninth, replaced us in the finals. I’d never been so disillusioned as I was for the next few weeks. The club I loved had been scarred forever and the question was whether it would recover.
Luckily, we had the right man for the job under our noses. Bomber Thompson was quickly appointed senior coach and set about the task of pulling the club together. He had an ace up his sleeve in a new training facility at Essendon Airport.
It was the new lease of life everyone needed. I loved Windy Hill and it had been a massive part of my life but my latest memories of the place were of cameras in my face every time I went in and out the door. The move to the new $27 million facility was like clearing your head of all the mental demons. It was an amazing set-up with two outdoor ovals, the biggest gym I’d ever seen, a pool, hot and cold baths and an enormous indoor area that was the size of five basketball courts.
If you wanted to come up with something to spur your career on, this was it. It was perfect for my training, given the surface was like carpet, and everything I needed for my recovery – which at my age was the most crucial element – was at my fingertips.
After being plagued by groin problems in 2013, I was determined to get my body right for my 22nd season.
The good thing was Bomber and I were on the same page in terms of our expectations for 2014.
‘If your form doesn’t warrant a game, you won’t be selected,’ he said.
‘That’s the way I want it but if I am worthy of a game I want to be played.’
He smiled and nodded. ‘Fair deal.’
Thankfully, it did warrant selection in Round 1 against North Melbourne, which meant I finally got the chance to claim the club games record. It had taken a bit longer than expected, not just because of the delay at the end of last season, but missing 20 games through suspension hadn’t helped my cause.
The question I was most asked in the lead-up to the record-breaking game, which we won by 39 points, was when it was all going to end. I didn’t have an answer to that – sadly, that was a statement I’d used too frequently in recent times.
ROSEMARY FLETCHER
Mother, grandparent, frustrated grey nomad
When Ken’s mum, Muriel, was alive she loved to watch Dustin play. She’d say: ‘There’s no-one like him!’ and she always thought he was the best player on the ground no matter who the Bombers played or where the scoreboard finished. She always thought James Hird was getting all the publicity. James would do wonderful things on the field but she could only ever see her grandchild. ‘Hird’s not that good,’ she’d say. ‘Dustin should have been in the paper, not him!’
Now we’re the grandparents . . . Ken and I have got this caravan and we want to go up north during the winter because it’s probably the best time to go. But we can’t go until Dustin finishes footy!
Dustin’s also messing up our big plans for the overseas trip Ken and I have been planning now for years. We can’t get over there for the good weather of the European summer because we want to be here watching Dust play through the winter.
Will this season be the last? Or will he play on? I don’t know, but the van is still sitting there waiting . . .
CHAPTER 18
THE CALL
The 02 prefix had me intrigued.
I was checking my mobile phone during a break in training and had two missed calls from the same number. There was no voicemail on my phone so there was no message, but it wasn’t long before my curiosity got the better of me and I dialled the number.
‘Welcome to the Australian Sports Anti-Doping Authority . . .’
I nearly dropped the phone. Why was ASADA ringing me now? My heart started beating a bit faster. What had happened?
Everything had seemed to have gone quiet for a couple of months. On the field we’d been inconsistent but we had strung two wins together after the bye to be just a game outside the eight after 12 rounds. It felt like we were starting to find a rhythm again as a team after all the distractions. But I knew this phone call could only mean bad news.
I turned to Cale Hooker, who was sitting next to me. ‘Have you got any missed calls from an 02
number?’ I asked.
He shook his head.
‘I have and it doesn’t sound flash, but I’m not sure if someone is taking the piss out of me.’
He quickly picked up what I was talking about. ‘I think someone is winding you up.’
I hoped so and went back to training, but just before the 2 pm weights session I was checking my phone again when it rang.
It was the same number. After a couple of rings I pressed the green button. The voice at the other end was clinical. ‘Can I check your email details?’ it asked.
‘Yeah, no worries. But what is this regarding?’
‘I’m not obliged to say.’
My frustration was rising. ‘Well, what do you need my email for?’
‘It’s ASADA and this is just the way it is,’ he replied.
I gave over my email details but then pressed him for more information. ‘What is this regarding?’ I asked again. ‘If you are contacting me, sending me a message, I would like to know what it is about.’
‘The appropriate people will deal with it. You’re going to get an email from ASADA.’
It was time to ask the million-dollar question. ‘Is it a show-cause notice? Is it something along those lines?’
‘I’m not obliged to say over the phone.’
And with that, he was gone. I stared at my phone for several moments. What the hell had just happened?
I slowly wandered towards the weights room like a zombie. But then I noticed that a few of my teammates also looked a bit shocked. You could tell who’d received a phone call and who hadn’t, but no-one was saying anything.
Word had obviously got upstairs to the administration, because as I pretended to focus on my weights, some of the staff were quietly going around asking players if they’d received a phone call. I didn’t say anything and got out of there as quickly as I could.
Fletch Page 18
