The build-up to our 2008 campaign was strange for me because it was my first pre-season without the imposing presence of Anthony Koutoufides. Kouta, who spent sixteen seasons with the Blues, is a legend of the club, no doubt about it. I also missed the presence of Denis Pagan. However, I appreciated the changes Brett Ratten was making. He made training a lot more interesting, and he was also keen to make two key changes to our game plan. The first was to have a spread of goal kickers to take some of the pressure off me. Ratts wanted us to be a bit smarter when kicking the ball, rather than always bombing it long like we had under Denis. The second was to fix our leaky defence. He wanted all the players on the ground to be able to push back and help out our defenders when we lost the ball.
I enjoyed playing under Ratts. He was a great bloke and loved a beer at times. He was also a real footy nerd. Even when he was a player, he would go home and study a recording of our last game and try to work out where we were going right and wrong. I think that’s something that he took from working with Wayne Brittain, who was a footy nerd as well. I remember that when Ratts and I were teammates, I often thought that he would be a coach one day, so I wasn’t surprised when he turned out to be a great coach at Carlton.
Our first practice match of the year was actually an exhibition game against Fremantle in the South African city of Pretoria. It was part of the AFL’s push to get kids playing Aussie Rules over there. We spent nine days in South Africa and it was one of the best experiences of my life. We started off with a high-altitude training camp at the University of Pretoria. Juddy didn’t do a lot of the training because he was still recovering from various off-season operations, but he passed on some great advice to the boys about how hard we needed to work to succeed. Given Juddy had already played in two Grand Finals with West Coast, we hung off every word he said. He was certainly lucky that he didn’t have to do all the physical work in Pretoria, as the thin air made it really tough.
From Pretoria we went to a couple of game parks, where we drove around watching elephants, giraffes and lots of other wildlife. It was brilliant. But we also experienced some things that put our own lives in perspective. We went to Soweto, a very poor township on the outskirts of Johannesburg. It was a real shock to see people living in tin shacks without electricity or running water. The place that had the biggest impact on me was the Sparrow Rainbow Village, a collection of rundown buildings where almost 300 children who were suffering from AIDS lived. One of the carers told us that it was common for up to eight children to die each week. In fact, there had been a funeral in the village just hours before we’d arrived. I clearly remember picking up a small black boy and giving him a cuddle. As I was holding him, tears started running down his face, and I couldn’t help but become emotional as well. He was just delighted that someone had shown him some love. It made me think hard about my own life, knowing that child might have only months or weeks to live. It was terribly sad.
After all that, it was a relief to have a game of footy to concentrate on. The match against the Dockers was played at a cricket ground called SuperSport Park. Ratts didn’t want to risk an injury to either Juddy or me, so we sat on the sidelines as our mates took on Fremantle before a crowd of more than 5000 enthusiastic South Africans. Andrew Carrazzo was made captain for the day and led from the front, while Adam Hartlett kicked three goals. But the Freo boys were a bit more hyped up for the contest, and after an even first half they ran out winners by 14 points.
Two weeks after returning from South Africa, I was selected to play in our first official pre-season game against Port Adelaide at AAMI Stadium. Ratts had made it quite clear early in the pre-season that he was not the least bit interested in winning the NAB Cup, which was certainly a big change from Denis’ approach. But I was still ecstatic when we beat the Power to record our first win in almost nine months. I was so excited to have tasted victory that I said to the media after the game, ‘I’ll be pretty disappointed if we don’t make the finals.’ It was a big call, but that was how I felt at the time. With Juddy in our camp, I thought anything was possible.
We were well beaten by Hawthorn in the second round of the NAB Cup, but the loss probably came as a relief to a lot of Blues people. Nobody wanted us to go on another pre-season charge. Two weeks later, there was a real buzz around the club when Juddy ran out for the first time in a Carlton jumper. We were playing our final practice match against the Western Bulldogs, and more than 10,000 fans came to Princes Park to see Juddy that afternoon. He was in great touch from the outset and picked up twenty possessions, each of which drew a cheer from the crowd. Just as I’d hoped, he put a few great passes down my throat, which ensured I also gave the crowd plenty to cheer about. My only problem was kicking for goal. I ended up having twelve shots for a return of only 4.8. Nevertheless, we were all confident of a good showing heading into our first game of the premiership season against Richmond at the MCG.
We had the weekend before round 1 off, so Alex and I decided to go out for a few drinks with some friends on the Friday night. Denis Pagan used to have a good saying about nights out. It went something like, ‘If you’re home before midnight, you’ll never get into trouble. But anything past midnight and you’re bound to end up in trouble.’ He was dead right about that. We had a really good time and drank at the Candy Bar in Prahran right up until it closed at 4 am, heading outside as the lights in the bar started getting turned off. I was busting for a leak, so I walked into what I thought was an alcove and started pissing. Unfortunately, it turned out that I was urinating on the front window of the bar. One of the barmen came out to tell me to stop and a bit of a scuffle took place. Alex and I then jumped into a taxi and headed home.
On the following Monday, three days out from our game against the Tigers—the 2008 season was to kick off on a Thursday night, an initiative driven as much by telecaster Channel 10 as by the AFL—I rocked up to training ready to tackle the season head-on. The incident at the Candy Bar didn’t even cross my mind as Ratts put us through a solid skills session. But that evening, a Channel 7 reporter phoned the footy club with some news that no-one at Princes Park wanted to hear. The bar had alerted Channel 7 to the fact that a security camera had caught me urinating on the window, and the vision was going to be screened on the news that night. I was immediately hauled into the office of Greg Swann, who was livid. He told me that the other members of the leadership group—Chris Judd, Nick Stevens, Heath Scotland, Andrew Carrazzo and Kade Simpson—had been told about my latest stuff-up, and they’d been charged with handing down a penalty.
As I drove home that night, I was shitting myself. I thought Juddy might want to make a point as the new captain. He had been at West Coast when the behaviour of some of that club’s players had gotten out of hand, so I feared that he was going to come down very hard on me. In fact, the more I thought about it, the more I believed that I was going to get the sack, particularly as I was in the last year of my contract. ‘Fuck,’ I kept thinking. ‘I’ve really done it this time.’ The next day, the newspapers were all over the story. Opinion writers like Mike Sheahan said the leadership group had to suspend me, at the very least. ‘Judd and Jury: Carlton leadership group to decide Fevola’s fate’, screamed the back page of the Herald Sun.
When I finally faced the leadership group, the boys gave me a serious talking-to. They said that I was letting myself and the club down. They were really angry that I was distracting the whole club from what it needed to focus on: defeating Richmond. To my relief, however, they wanted me back out on the field. They certainly didn’t want the club to sack me, and they had convinced Greg Swann and Ratts that I needed to be supported, not cut loose. That was a massive relief. I wasn’t even suspended from the game against Richmond. Instead, I was fined $10,000, kicked out of the leadership group and ordered to start changing my ways by attending counselling, in the form of an alcohol education course.
Straightaway, I admitted to Greg Swann that I knew I had a problem with alcohol, and he arranged for me to
start the course the following week. Then I told him that I was swearing off alcohol for the remainder of my football career. ‘I deadset mean it,’ I said to him. He looked at me with an angry expression and told me that if I made one more bad decision, I would be sacked immediately. Greg later repeated the threat to newspaper reporters: ‘We’ve agreed with Brendan that if there are any more alcohol-related incidents, then that will result in him being terminated … He’s finished.’ My first coach at the Blues, David Parkin, also saw fit to tee off at me in the media. ‘I’ve got to take responsibility for having recruited him,’ he told Herald Sun reporter Sam Edmund. ‘I recruited him and was unable, in the more formative years, to bring a permanent change in his behaviour, which is a sad reflection on us and a sadder reflection on him as a person.’ I had an enormous amount of respect for Parko, so those comments cut deep. I knew that I had to make some serious changes in my life.
Alex would come with me a week later when I attended my first counselling session. But before that took place, I had a game of footy to play. Despite the strange Thursday night timeslot, more than 70,000 fans packed into the MCG to see Carlton do battle with the Tigers. As I ran up the race towards the banner, I was desperate to make amends for my latest balls-up. And in the first half of the game, I did everything right. I kicked a couple of goals, I laid a few tackles, and, most importantly, my body language was positive. My competitive frame of mind rubbed off on my teammates as we opened up a 25-point lead midway through the second quarter. From there, however, our skills went to shit and we lost our composure. Credit must go to the Tigers, as they put a stack of pressure on us and Daniel Jackson did a great job in tagging Juddy. We did let them get on a roll, but we couldn’t stop Matthew Richardson, who put in an outstanding performance roaming around the forward line. The Tigers were a point in front at three-quarter time and they ended up kicking six goals to our one in the last term.
Juddy’s lack of pre-season training caught up with him late in the game and he ran out of steam. When Ratts decided to bring him off, he got Bronx cheers from all the Richmond supporters. A few minutes later, I came off as well and received the same treatment. When the siren sounded, confirming a 30-point win for the Tigers, we were both sitting on the bench looking glum. When we trudged onto the field to shake hands with our opponents, Chris Newman ran over to me, grinning hugely. He was pumped. But for us, it was a case of new season, same old story. Even with the best player in the league in our ranks, we still weren’t good enough.
I attended my first counselling session a couple of days after our loss to Richmond, and I really appreciated Alex’s show of support by coming with me. It wasn’t only an alcohol problem I was being treated for. My gambling habit, which had begun as a $10-a-day hobby, was also out of control. Initially, I’d spent hours playing internet poker, just for fun, and those games had chewed up a decent amount of cash. But things got completely out of hand after I met some bookies who let me punt on the horses using credit. As I spent more and more money, the bookies kept putting more and more money in my account. They would deposit up to $50,000 at a time and I would put the whole lot on one horse. I did most of my punting on the races over the phone, which was a massive issue. I’d never go and physically put $10,000 cash on a horse, but you don’t actually see the money when you punt over the phone. I’d think, ‘Ten grand here, twenty grand there. Whatever.’ When I won, I’d be rapt. But I couldn’t actually get hold of the money because it was in my phone account. So I’d gamble it and lose. Then I’d be chasing my tail and it was like, ‘Fuuuuck.’ Yet the cash just kept appearing, so I treated it like it was Monopoly money.
The following week, after managing only two goals in another big loss to St Kilda (our tenth consecutive defeat by the Saints), I was back in the big chair talking to the counsellor. It was during that second session that certain messages started to sink in and I became convinced I really could give up alcohol, at least for the remainder of my playing career. When I told the Blues I was still serious about becoming a teetotaller, they leaked the story to the press, with my blessing. I was a tad surprised, however, when the Herald Sun ran it on their front page a couple of days before we were due to play Essendon in round 3. ‘Career Booze Ban’ screamed the headline. Greg Swann had told Mark Robinson that he was cautiously pleased with this development: ‘The proof will be in his actions. But I’m pleased he has given this undertaking. He’s started the process. He is out of contract. He’s got that black cloud hanging over his head in regards to behaviour and that will determine what happens.’
The counselling and my declaration that I was off the grog combined to give me a great mindset before we ran out to take on the Bombers. And although we lost—it was, when you took into account the previous year, our fourteenth premiership season loss on the trot—I won back plenty of friends by kicking eight goals (I also hit the post three times). Seven days later I felt unstoppable when I booted another seven, all of them on youngster Harry O’Brien, as we finally broke our drought with an upset win over none other than Collingwood. During the last quarter, after we’d opened up a match-winning lead, the Carlton supporters started singing the club song. After so many losses, the noise gave me goosebumps. Our victory was Ratts’ first official win as coach, and when we sang the song down in the rooms, we made him stand in the middle of our circle, alongside the players who were first-time winners for Carlton. Ratts and the boys got covered in Gatorade, but they never stopped smiling.
15 June 2008: Brendan is hugged by fans after the Carlton v Collingwood AFL match at the MCG. (Newspix/Michael Dodge)
Only a month on from the Candy Bar incident, I was being hailed as a hero again. Ratts was particularly delighted with my involvement in a last-quarter goal by Shaun Grigg that had sealed our win. I’d dragged Heath Shaw to ground shortly after he’d received the ball. When Shaw had dished off a quick handball to Harry O’Brien, I’d sprinted across to tackle him and knocked the ball free, then quickly pounced on the Sherrin and dished off a handball to Griggy, who put it through. ‘If he kicked ten goals, that is fantastic,’ Ratts told the media. ‘If he kicks two goals and is chasing blokes down like that, I can never complain.’ In his post-match press conference, Collingwood coach Mick Malthouse was asked to explain why he left O’Brien on me for so long. Mick replied that it was a learning process for Harry: ‘Carlton used the ball far better [than we did] and Superman or Batman or Spiderman wouldn’t have done any better.’ The next day, the newspapers published digitally altered pictures of me wearing a Superman cape and grinning from ear to ear.
In round 5 we beat Melbourne and I kicked another seven goals, which made it twenty-two snaggers in three weeks. Suddenly, I was leading the race for the Coleman Medal and sitting atop the vote-counts in all the media awards. I had ridden to the bottom of the footy rollercoaster during the pre-season, but now I was back at the top.
My great form saw me selected in the Victorian squad which was to play the Dream Team in a match commemorating 150 years of Australian Rules football. Held at the MCG on 10 May, the Hall of Fame Tribute Match, as it was called, would feature many of the best players in the AFL. Our side included Juddy, 2007 Brownlow medallist Jimmy Bartel and Sydney Swans superstar Adam Goodes, while the Dream Team had Buddy Franklin, Matthew Richardson and Matthew Pavlich. I was pumped when the Victorian coach, Mark Thompson, not only included me in his team but named me at full-forward. Because State of Origin footy had been abandoned when I was just starting my career, I never thought I would get the chance to pull on the famous Big V jumper. That’s why it was such an honour to play.
We had a couple of fantastic training sessions before the big clash. When you train with your club, the ball tends to hit the ground a bit. But when the Victorian squad trained at the MCG, it was magic. The ball would go from one end of the ground to the other and pretty much never touch the turf.
Although we stayed in a hotel for two nights before the match, I tried to follow my usual routine on game day. I got up
early and went down to Port Melbourne to walk around in the cold sea water. That was something I’d done before every Carlton game for a couple of years. I’m not sure about the science behind it, but it seemed to help my legs stay fresh late in games.
I was in a pretty cheeky mood when we gathered in the rooms on the Saturday night, a couple of hours before the opening bounce. I walked up to Juddy, poked him in the ribs and said, ‘Would you mind having a look at my speech? I’m going to win the Allen Aylett Medal.’ Juddy shook his head and laughed, saying, ‘You’re kidding, aren’t you?’ I became a bit more serious once I pulled on my Big V jumper. Looking at the famous guernsey made me think of the late EJ Whitten, who did so much to keep State of Origin footy alive during the latter years of his life. As a fourteen-year-old, I was at the MCG in 1995 when ‘Teddy’ did his emotional lap of honour before Victoria played South Australia. He was stricken by cancer at the time, and everyone in the crowd gave him a standing ovation as Mariah Carey’s song Hero played over the public address system. Teddy died only a couple of months later, and since then I’ve always thought of him when I’ve heard that song.
I wasn’t able to wear number 25 in the game, which was something of a disappointment. It was given to Collingwood’s Josh Fraser, who wore number 25 for the Magpies, because he’d played more games than me. I wore 23 instead, which had been my number during my junior career at Narre Warren and Berwick. Nonetheless, it was an honour to run out alongside Brisbane Lions star Jonny Brown, who was our captain. Browny’s joy at getting an opportunity to wear the Big V rubbed off on everyone else. It was also great that a crowd of nearly 70,000 turned up that night. The funny thing was that I found myself getting cheered by people who usually hated me. When I was jogging up the race towards the banner, an old lady in a Collingwood scarf leaned over the fence and yelled, ‘Hey Fevola, I hate your guts, but tonight I love you!’
Fev: In My Own Words Page 18