‘I’m just being me’: Danielle Laidley on life after transition

This story is part of the Good Weekend: Best of Features 2023 editon.See all 22 stories.

Danielle May Laidley sits silently in the grandstands above the Melbourne Cricket Ground, her angular face squinting. The pearlescent stiletto nail of her index finger bobs up and down and left and right, but seems to be pointing away from the footy itself. I ask why. “Counting players,” she murmurs. “North Melbourne are playing a spare defender and conceding a man at stoppages. You do that when you’re trying to protect against a blowout – stem the tide, steal a few goals on counter-attack.”

Laidley, 56, would know. The most famous trans­gender person in Australia played 151 AFL games as a scrawny, antagonistic half-back flank for the West Coast Eagles and the North Melbourne Kangaroos, before leading the latter for 149 games as its inscrutable, choleric coach.

See that forward pocket? That’s where she once ran back with the flight of the Sherrin in front of the ­murderous bulk of Tony Lockett, the football equivalent of throwing yourself in front of a freight train. See that wing? That’s where she tore her anterior cruciate ligament, watched the lower half of her unhinged limb sway like the pendulum on a grandfather clock, and vomited. The centre circle? That’s where she collapsed with relief – knees down, arms up, eyes closed – after the 1996 grand final, having finally won the flag she hoped would make her feel whole. She can still hear that siren.

By contrast, this late-August match is inconsequential. Laidley nonetheless stands at the finish as three retiring champions – Kangaroos defender Jack Ziebell and triple-premiership Richmond players Trent Cotchin and Jack Riewoldt – are lauded and applauded for their longevity and greatness. “That’s so well done,” she says, clapping long and loud, smiling widely and sighing. “That’s the best send-off I’ve ever seen.”

Laidley with the now-retired Jack Ziebell, a player Laidley recruited when North Melbourne coach.Credit: Courtesy of The North Melbourne Kangaroos

Her wistful reaction makes sense. Laidley’s playing career petered out at age 30 without any such ­ceremonial curtain call in round 22, 1997. It ended with Laidley sitting on the bench, watching the big screen, while news broke that Lady Diana was dead.

But that was just the end of Act I. You possibly know the tragic plot points of her tale. The years hiding her true self – untenable compartmentalisation of her gender dysphoria leading to serious substance abuse (including ice and GHB) and two suicide attempts. The May 2020 arrest by Victoria Police for stalking an ex-partner and drug possession – after which photos of Laidley dressed as a woman in a wig and make-up were leaked, outing her in brutal public fashion.

Three years passed, in which Laidley moved forward, albeit haltingly. Last year, she published a memoir, Don’t Look Away, which I helped her write: a process she found equally tormenting and cathartic. A documentary, Danielle Laidley: Two Tribes, is coming out shortly on Stan (owned by Nine, which publishes Good Weekend). She’s also moved back to Perth, where she grew up.

This third or fourth or fifth act of her story takes place mostly in Perth’s coastal Scarborough alongside her partner, childhood sweetheart Donna Leckie, with whom she has a business providing residential care homes for disabled people. She does corporate speaking gigs and workshops. She dresses in bougie outfits and attends glamorous parties; she gets flown to the Sydney Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras and the launch of RuPaul’s Drag Race Down Under. Follow her on Instagram and you’ll see her at the 2022 Brownlow Medal in a white Marquise Bridal gown or at this year’s Logies in a plunging black number by Zhivago. She’s considering coaching, too, maybe commentating, perhaps doing some advocacy work with the AFL.

But it’s a lot, so she needs support. An hour before today’s game, she walks into the Kangaroos change rooms. The players are warming up, pinging footies and stretching, and all arms open up to her. She hugs Alastair Clarkson, now a famed four-time ­premiership coach but once just her nuggety teammate, as was assistant coach John Blakey, who also offers an embrace. She hugs Brett Ratten, whom she coached against when he was at Carlton. She hugs Gavin Brown, whom she met when she was an assistant coach at Collingwood. She hugs current players, including the retiring Ziebell, a player she recruited in her final year as coach, and defender Luke McDonald, whose father was football manager when she was coach, and midfielder Bailey Scott, whose father Robert Scott played in that 1996 premiership. It’s misleading to say she hugs them, however, because they hug her.

“That means everything to Dani,” whispers Donna Leckie. “The way they welcome her in, welcome her back, it’s just the nicest thing. Makes my heart burst.”

Laidley got used to the AFL spotlight a long time ago, as a coach fronting weekly pressers after wins and losses, but the attention now is different. It’s haphazard and unpredictably intense. A recent Instagram video of her at the Logies was viewed 205,000 times, with reactions she estimates were 98 per cent positive, two per cent hatred. Accusations: You’re just doing this for attention. Judgments: You’re mentally sick. Abusive ­questions: Have you had your cock cut off yet? And sneering questions: If you don’t mind me asking, what would you like me to call you: Dean or Deano?

Laidley and her partner Donna Leckie celebrating Mardi Gras this year.Credit: Courtesy of Stan

She doesn’t understand why – “Does it fill their cup? Does it make them feel good?” – but there’s little she can do except diligently block and mute. Sometimes she returns messages privately and they backpedal and apologise – or double down. That’s when she names and shames them on social media. “It’s a battle you’re never going to win, and you don’t want to get yourself too wrapped up in it, but I also need to show that I’m not going away.”

She speaks conscientiously about the white male privilege she once enjoyed and how things aren’t that way for her anymore. “People look, stare, comment. Others walk past and smile. Either way, I’m just being me.”

Just being her, of course, means being a spokes­person for the rainbow community – and that comes with an expectation that she be an exemplar. But she actually views visibility – “just being seen” – as her greatest responsibility right now. “You won’t find me on the steps of Parliament House. That’s not the way – for me,” she says. “I’ve been mindful not to jump on my transgender soapbox and beat my chest, because I’m still learning about myself and my community.”

Sam Matthews, a transgender woman who ­co-directed the upcoming documentary alongside the Emmy Award-winning Julie Kalceff, says Laidley wasn’t well-placed for assuming such mantles when filming began two years ago. “But she’s doing tremendously,” says Matthews. “Interviewing her, I really got this growing sense that everything she said took into account how other people receive her message.”

Laidley and Leckie on the 2023 Logies red carpet.Credit: Courtesy of Stan

Laidley largely maintained a public silence while filming and spent much of that time studying, taking online diversity and inclusion courses at Purdue University and Pennsylvania State University, so she can wrap academic study around her life experience. But she’s finally happy to start answering all the questions journalists will invariably ask.

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Let’s wade into them. There’s a note in the documentary that her former name and pronouns are used with permission. Incorrect pronouns weren’t something that especially bothered her in the past, unless intentional. “I’ve had this public profile previously, and some people have seen me a something completely different to who I am now and that’s a big change for them. And I’m forgiving about that,” she says. “What I find is that people who have only met me as me, never miss.” She. Her. Danielle. “They never miss.”

Where she’s shifted position is in emphasising the need to educate people to make that effort. In her seminars, Laidley often gets someone’s name wrong – intentionally and repeatedly – and later asks how it felt. “They don’t feel seen,” she says. “When you can get someone to feel the emotions you do, it’s a light-bulb moment.”

What about gender-affirming medical intervention – prescribing hormone suppressors for people under 18? How does she tread that highly fraught and politicised line? Again, she says she’s still listening. She’s visited gender clinics, spoken to expert endocrinologists and, just a few months ago, heard the stories from 128 gender-diverse kids she helped bus from regional Victoria to the Victorian Pride Centre in St Kilda, a support hub for LGBTIQ+ communities. “I think we need to let the science decide and tread very carefully,” she says. “Am I in one corner or the other? All I can say is, ‘Get the best medical advice to make informed decisions and listen to your children’. That’s critical.”

How about the trans sports debate? First, she isn’t worried about Olympic gold medals but instead about what we do at community level. “Sport is a huge part of the Australian way of life, teaching social skills, ­teamwork, a sense of belonging, and if you’re a young child, you should be allowed to play. Full stop. We’ve got to embrace everyone.”

Second, a blanket rule for professional sport is unworkable, given each sport’s different physiological demands, but for AFL she considers her own career, remembering herself as a player at 27 after a decade of elite training. “If I had transitioned then and straight away wanted to play in AFLW, I would have had a ­competitive advantage. How long that advantage would last after hormone replacement therapy, I can’t say. Is it six months, 12 months, two years? We need more scientific evidence.”

One last culture war battleground. On a visit to The Age to record an episode of the Good Weekend Talks podcast, I show Laidley and Leckie to the ladies’ bathroom, and ask them about the billboard that a number of women’s rights groups erected – Self ID gives men & boys the key to women & girls’ change rooms – in an attempt to stoke fears that males are identifying as trans to invade female spaces.

Initially, Laidley used unisex or disabled toilets. It took time before she could brave a stall in the women’s. Leckie always chaperones and is blunt about what she sees as a ridiculous kerfuffle. “I must have grown up in the most progressive family because we had a unisex toilet at home,” she says. “My brothers went to the same toilet as me, right? It’s as simple as that.”

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The AFLW season launch party is in full swing when Laidley and Leckie march into Melbourne’s Forum Theatre. Laidley is wearing a black silk shirt and capri pants with heeled sandals, carrying a small tote bag. (She hands me the latter occasionally to hold dutifully while she kisses, hugs and glad-hands.)

Laidley and AFL CEO Gillon McLachlan at the 2023 AFLW season launch. “It was a brutal time,” he says of her outing.Credit: Jonathan DiMaggio/AFL Photos

She doesn’t dance around the edges of the party either, but charges over the red carpet into a phalanx of friends from her former life. She seeks out Sydney Swans boss Tom Harley, then catches up with Tim Harrington from the AFL Players Association, along with Richmond chief executive Brendon Gale and AFLW superstar Monique Conti. She seems utterly at home, necking a bottle of Great Northern and flitting around the old picture palace. “Dani’s connecting,” narrates Leckie, with almost an eye roll. “She knows how to work a room.”

Laidley saunters, finally, into a circle of AFL heavyweights, getting a hug from chairman Richard Goyder and a peck on the cheek from outgoing chief executive Gillon McLachlan – one of the first figures in football she met after her public outing.

“It was a brutal time,” McLachlan recalls. “I had no knowledge of her incredible wrestle, but you see the news and the photos and it reminds you that life’s not always straightforward. I just said what I thought: I was thrilled she now felt confident to be who she had always been, and that there was a role for her to play – if she wanted – to help so many girls and boys.”

McLachlan has endeared himself to Laidley, which is why she reacts so strongly – so defensively – later that night after she gets home and watches an episode of Four Corners decrying the AFL for creating an environment in which no gay player has ever publicly come out. I’d wondered what Danielle would think of the story and she clarifies with a late-night text ­message: I am furious.

Football wrapped its arms around her “unconditionally, to the last person, all the way from the top”, she says later. “We actually look after our own really well. It’s outside of the AFL, and outside of clubland, that the waters can get pretty stormy.”

The first gay player through the door, she adds, will inevitably get a punch in the nose from the wider world. She can’t imagine that “burden” – an interesting word choice, given McLachlan was pilloried in the ABC story for using the same term. “You’re going to tell me that the media are not going to be all over that person? That’s the burden,” she says. “It’s not a burden about being who you are. It’s the ­burden of what is written and said. They want to whack Gil for that? Wrong.”

Laidley occupies an interesting place in any debate about toxic masculinity in sport. She freely admits the game pushed her to the brink, but that’s trumped in her mind by footy’s ­redemptive power. When she met Eddie McGuire, the former long-time Collingwood president and owner of Jam TV (which produced the upcoming documentary), she said she thought football would kill her, yet it saved her life. “Those words should be ­inscribed in stone in the foyer of AFL House,” says McGuire. “It’s our obligation to hold on to everyone when they need help.”

“It’s not a burden about being who you are. It’s the burden of what is written and said.”

Danielle Laidley

The help came, of course, in the form of love – from people such as ex-teammate Wayne Schwass, who ­remembers Laidley first arriving at the Kangaroos as an aloof, yet fierce footballer. “She would attend events and leave early or disappear,” Schwass says. “She could be seen as moody or dismissive or disengaged. But I was like that myself.“

Wayne Schwass kisses Laidley after the Roos win the 1996 grand final.Credit: Vince Caligiuri

Schwass desperately wanted to go and see Laidley in the holding cell when she was arrested, but sent her a text instead. I don’t know what it’s like to walk in your shoes, and I’m not going to pretend, but what I do know is that while some things have changed, other things haven’t, and one that won’t is our friendship, and the love I have for you.

Anthony Stevens, who knew Laidley both as a teammate (nicknamed “Tunnel” because of her singular focus) and as a coach (nicknamed “The Bible” because she was so hard to read), was similarly crucial. He was the first person to visit Laidley during her 2020 stint in rehab in Geelong, following her fateful arrest. It was the first time Stevens had ever seen his friend as a transgender woman: “She looked at me and put her head down. She was really nervous. ‘Come on,’ I said. ‘Give me a big cuddle.’ ”

The other key support, of course, was Donna Leckie. In private screenings of the documentary so far, two common audience reactions stand out to executive producer Luke Tunnecliffe. The first is the crying, and the second is the smiling – over a love story no one was expecting. “We watched that blossom in front of our eyes,” says Tunnecliffe. “From where Dani was and what she was going through, to where she is now – Donna was just pivotal.”

With Leckie going through old newspaper clippings.Credit: Courtesy of Stan

I tag along with Laidley and Leckie to The Peter Doherty Institute in Melbourne on a recent Wednesday afternoon, where Laidley is giving a keynote address after touring the laboratories upstairs, the home of crucial COVID-19 research during the pandemic. “In my work,” she says, “I hope to save lives, too.”

The event is a guided chat to celebrate Wear It Purple Day, the national awareness initiative for “young rainbow people”, so Laidley walks the audience through her life story, buttressed by research. She explains gender dysphoria by relating it to homesickness. “You want to get back to your pillow. The smell of your kitchen. The comfort of your lounge. That’s your safe space. You miss it, because it’s where you belong.”

She shows a graph illustrating the extent to which young people suffer from mental health issues like ­depression and anxiety, not to mention self-harm and suicide attempts, and the difference between the rates in the general population and the staggering frequency for transgender individuals. “That was me,” she says, pointing to the bar charts. “And that was me. That
was me, too.“

In the third row sits Leckie, nodding and laughing and weeping in all the right places. She’s been to more than 50 of these presentations. “I’m mesmerised every time,” she says. “You know that presence Dani has – demands attention without demanding attention? That’s always been there, from day one.”

Day one was grade one, 1973, at Warriapendi Primary School in the hardscrabble suburb of Balga, north of Perth. “Two little left-handers, they sat us together in the corner, so our elbows wouldn’t bump the kid next to us,” says Leckie. “Two DLs [their initials]. Two sports-crazy kids.” Leckie was the netball star; Laidley the footy star. Both were great at cricket. They dated in high school but every time Leckie ­suggested she come over, Laidley would say she had homework. (Leckie now knows that her teen crush was distracted, surreptitiously experimenting with make-up, dresses and wigs.)

“Why can’t people understand that a human just loves another human?”

Donna Leckie

They grew up and had families, and reconnected a handful of years ago when both had split from their spouses. Later, after Laidley’s public outing, Leckie helped her through her darkest times and a relationship was born. Just don’t ask them if they’re lesbians, they say: labels are irrelevant. Leckie has loved Laidley her whole life. As she puts it in the documentary: “Why can’t people understand that a human just loves another human?” None of what Laidley has done lately – writing books, filming documentaries, delivering seminars – would have been ­possible without Leckie. “She’s been my rock,” says Laidley. “We’re building a great life together. I love her to bits.”

Even 18 months ago, this speech in front of scientists would have been almost too ­exhausting. Back then, all the rainbow marches and Pride functions and celebrity soirées were a “sugar hit” of excitement and colour, which would then be followed by an inevitable crash. “Danielle was straight to bed, and I would be all ‘woe is me’. Lonely. Bored. Worried,” says Leckie. “Dani might get up, have something to eat and then go back to bed.”

Laidley has been dealing with ongoing personal issues for three years. The biggest triggers were legal matters with Victoria Police. She can’t discuss any of those disciplinary, criminal or civil actions, due to a confidential financial settlement, but the drawn-out nature of those proceedings was a source of continuing anguish. “I can easily go back and put myself in that time, and I can relive those feelings and emotions and get upset. But if you keep looking in the rearview mirror, you’re gonna crash,” she says. “I suppose time is a great healer, ­because I’m working with Victoria Police ­developing education packages for their academy. But I can’t say I’ve forgiven and I’ll never forget.”

Laidley separated from her wife long before she was splashed across the news, but she has the ongoing ­support of her son, Kane. The pain that won’t fade, however, is the ­absence of her two daughters – and grandchildren – from her life. Now aged 24 and 36, the girls haven’t ­spoken with Laidley since her gender dysphoria became public.

But she sees her psychologist every Thursday religiously, developing strategies to cope, and much of the work is about putting herself in their shoes. “Can you imagine these young girls going through what they had to endure? Through the public scrutiny and the chaos that followed?” she says. “We just work towards me being the best person that I can, so that when the day comes, I’m ready with open arms.”

A group of people used to catch up with Laidley every Monday night on a Zoom call to make sure she was functioning well. A rotating motley crew of mates included Stevens, AFL coaching adviser Mark Brayshaw and Jackson Oppy, who ran the rehab centre where Laidley got clean; advisers such as police accountability lawyer Jeremy King and Laidley’s agent, Tony Box, managing director of sports management outfit TLA Worldwide – all dedicated to helping Laidley through the chop and to clear water.

The interest in Laidley as a speaker has been immense, Box says, his client called on for presentations to the likes of BHP and Corrections Victoria, the Western Australian Equal Opportunity Commission and the Royal Australasian College of Surgeons. But it hasn’t always been easy. “You could see when she was not at her best and regressed a bit with her mental health. She would be on the couch, not engaging,” says Box, whose stable includes Susie O’Neill, Joe Ingles and Michael Long. “It was just about checking in – this too shall pass, one day at a time.”

The documentary producer Luke Tunnecliffe, 43, has known Laidley for 23 years, since she began assistant coaching under Mick Malthouse at Collingwood, where Tunnecliffe was the tech guy who worked on video and statistical analysis. Now he’s the chief content officer behind a string of immersive docuseries, from the seven-episode snapshot of the 2020 AFL ­season (Making Their Mark) to a similar show for the AFLW (Fearless). Danielle Laidley: Two Tribes was a massive project, shot in two states over two years, often contending with lockdowns and border closures.

The film crew followed Laidley everywhere, taping her for 105 hours, sifting through 80 hours of archival footage and condensing the lot into a tight, 89-minute film with a red-carpet premiere on September 18 and a next-day launch on Stan. “In those early days, there were points when she was just mentally disintegrating,” he says. “We always hoped for a happy ending, but you never know when you’re making a feature where it will end.”

This article’s author and Laidley biographer, with wife Nikki, Leckie and Laidley at a North Melbourne v Richmond match in August.Credit: Konrad Marshall

I remember wondering if our book would be difficult to finish, too, given Laidley’s fluctuating moods, the appointments postponed and cancelled. Anthony Stevens tells me he was against committing to commercial work so soon. He just wanted his friend to heal. And he’s got a point. I was asking a vulnerable person to open up about the most troubled and intimate aspects of her existence. Laidley guesses we spent more than 100 hours together, and most of it was me drilling down into every triggering detail: Can you tell me more about that incredibly embarrassing/frightening/painful/confusing moment from your life?

I tried to tell her when I thought it was too much, when she needed a rest. Laidley likes to say that I walked her right up to the edge of the cliff but held her there, never allowing her to fall. Still, Stevens makes me wonder if it was ethical. “It’s worked out in the end, but there were moments – days on end when she couldn’t get out of bed, and I 100 per cent did not agree with all this work,” says Stevens, who’s now in regional real estate. “It frustrated the shit out of me, because there were a lot of times when I would have to come to the rescue because there was this pressure put on her to hit deadlines.”

Schwass, who founded the mental-health initiative PukaUp after his own experiences with suicidal ­ideation, is just happy his friend made it through and that they can finally talk for real. The love he felt for Laidley in the 1990s was genuine, he says, but also ­superficial, forged in the brutality of footy and bound up in alcohol. “It was a shallow love,” he reiterates. “I wish we’d had the maturity and language and confidence and skills as young adults to sit down and talk about what we were going through, because our journeys might have been different. When we get together now, we don’t talk football, we talk life.”

Schwass says his friend needs to be careful to pick and choose her opportunities soberly and sensibly. He’ll challenge Laidley to prioritise herself and pause to step away. “Champion the cause. Go as hard as you want,” he says, “but it should never be at the expense of your own emotional well­being. Ever.”

With former teammates Anthony Stevens (left) and Wayne Schwass.Credit: Courtesy of Stan

It might make them feel better to know that Laidley loves telling her story. Whether she’s talking to someone privately or holding a workshop, the instant feedback gives her a sense of the weekly wins she chased in football. “It’s actually very therapeutic,” she adds. “It’s a positive affirmation, in a way, reminding me where I was a few years ago, to where I am now.”

I have to ask the question many footy fans ­ponder most: does she want to coach again? Alas, no, she doesn’t want the all-consuming grind of coaching at the elite level. She probably couldn’t even coach at her junior club – the Balga Bombers – because her constant ­travel to Victoria for advocacy and ambassadorial work would make it impossible to show up for every training session or match. “But if something was put in front of me with flexibility, I would look at it,” she says. “It’s an itch I’d love to scratch.“

Broadcast commentary is a possibility, though probably not on Friday Night Football screens. She prefers radio for exploring the nuances of the game. “It’s short, sharp and succinct – but you’re educating the listener about a strategy or a match-up that’s influencing the contest.”

The specifics of any role with the AFL would be entirely up to Laidley, says McLachlan, but the outgoing boss views her as a change agent on a par with beloved Indigenous star Eddie Betts or AFLW trailblazer Daisy Pearce. “I think Dani is the most ­significant figure we’ve had in our game that can speak to diversity and inclusion,” says McLachlan. “Boys and girls with their own struggles can look at her, and see that she’s playing a role in football, and that football is totally accepting and welcoming of her, and think ‘Maybe I can feel a bit better about myself, too’.”

For now, though, she’s back in Scarborough, near the beach where she grew up surfing, where she grew her blonde hair long and wore bronze zinc like a layer of foundation. She steps onto the sand every day there, and swims whenever she can. Her business – SIL Care – is going gangbusters, with four homes throughout Perth providing 24/7 care (known as supported independent living) for disabled clients. (It was born out of the need to be guardian and carer for her little brother, Paul, who suffered a traumatic brain injury in a motorcycle accident.) Leckie has a background in nursing and aged care, and runs the company, while Laidley is the dogsbody, hiring trucks and assembling furniture and mowing lawns. “Which I actually really enjoy,” she says. “It’s just us, just living this normal, day-to-day life.”

Getting her hands dirty and doing the work, she says, is probably the key to looking after herself. “I love ­building our lives, but it’s also a balance of retreating, and living our own lives,” she says, pausing. “There was a time when I probably thought football was my calling in life. But maybe it’s something greater than that.”

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