Downfall of a legend: Brett Dallas’ greatest moments and the signs of his demise

Brett Dallas had a promising career and was a former State of Origin hero. Robert Craddock examines his downfall and the personal battles that have brought him undone.

State of Origin warhorse Billy Moore swears he never once saw his quicksilver teammate Brett Dallas get run down from behind.

Making the breathless souls behind him look as if they were dragging a ball and chain was the blissful part of rugby league for a man who was built like an Olympic sprinter and ran like one.

It was the road ahead – the potholed path beyond football – that stopped the game’s fastest man like a cheetah that flashed across the open plains only to indignantly stumble into a pond of quicksand.

Dallas, a former State of Origin hero who played 10 games for his state and five Tests for Australia, walked from custody after a 10-and-a-half-month jail stint in Mackay last month following a string of charges including aggravated drug possession.

Brett Dallas follows his mother out of Mackay Police Station. Picture: Daryl Wright

The court heard Dallas, 47, returned to his home town Mackay following his marriage breakdown and linked up with a woman alleged to have been a “heavy” drug user.

Police searched Dallas’s home, which he shared with partner Debby Suk Ching Lau, at Slade Point and found 29.175 grams of ice inside a hidden compartment in the oven, $7670 in cash and various drug utensils.

There were also two marijuana plants growing in the backyard and the court was told that earlier in his life his paranoid schizophrenia led to ice abuse.

It had been a long, sad, painful decline.

The hearing came a year after Dallas had faced Mackay Magistrates Court for his 10th stealing offence for items such as a $690 coffee table, four pairs of boardshorts, an SD card and portable charger.

His crimes were so blatant they were immediately detected on CCTV footage as the regularity and simplicity of them cast serious questions about his mental state.

Brett Dallas in 1995.

Dallas, at one stage threatened with a 25-year jail sentence, was last month released on a 20-month parole. Justice Graeme Crow could have sent Dallas back to jail but spared him. The reprieve came with a witheringly direct assessment of his condition.

“You have serious mental health problems,’’ Justice Crow said.

“Of course Mr Dallas those serious mental health problems will only be exacerbated by resort to illicit drugs.

“They are not a cure. They send you into the pitiful state which you are in now.”

On Dallas’s painful journey through the court system a string of judges and lawyers could see that he was not so much a devious, malicious villain than a lost soul in the grip of addictive drugs.

It always seemed he was the person most at threat from his actions, although he did break the hearts of many around him.

Moore, Dallas’s former North Sydney and Queensland teammate, had been well aware of his teammate’s desperate plight for years yet it still shook him as he set eyes on the photo of a stone-faced, square-jawed, ultra-intense looking Dallas walking out of court a free but troubled man.

“I opened up the paper – it was page eight of The Courier-Mail – and I saw the photo of him outside court and read the story and thought ‘there is one of my brothers in arms,’’ Moore said before drawing a rueful breath.

Maroons Billy Moore, Danny Moore and Brett Dallas celebrate the 1995 State of Origin.

All at once, there was sympathy, bewilderment, frustration but the enduring sentiment was the inescapable reality that the course of a man’s destiny had reached the last chance saloon.

“This is the crossroads moment of his life. He has a 20-month suspended sentence hanging over his head. If he goes into court from here it just gets worse and worse.

“I have never been to jail. I have heard stories that people go to jail and learn how to become a better criminal. I hope Brett has learnt how to become a better person. I assume he is clean now from drugs. It comes down to want now. How much does he want to turn his life around?’’

That very topic was chewed over at great length at the 100th celebration of the Mackay Brothers Rugby League club last month.

Dallas played for the club but there was no invitation extended to him because it would not have felt right given his current plight and the feeling he probably would not have turned up anyway.

But his tortured tale was still a spirited and divisive conversation topic.

“I had a theory that now was the time we must reach out to him because the next month will decide the course of his life,’’ one attendee said.

“But the response was grim. They said ‘we have tried and tried … he is beyond help’. These were good people who had tried hard. You just sense this is the moment for him if he is to turn the corner. But it won’t be easy.’’

Charitable organisations such as the Men of League did their best for Dallas, lining up work for him in his trade as an electrician, but he could not hold down a job.

They also tried to get him a job in the mines but he did not want to travel.

They even went a step further and booked him into a rehab clinic in Brisbane for his drug addiction, but that attempt failed as well.

In the end he exhausted their patience and they put their efforts into more responsive projects.

Whenever Dallas makes the news in court, the outcome echoes across the world to be reported in English county Wigan where he was an enduring star during the most long-lasting club stint of his career.

Australia Kangaroos RL player Brett Dallas in England in 1995. Picture: Andrew Darby

Dallas owned two iconic rugby league moments on different sides of the world.

In the famous 1995 State of Origin series he sealed victory for an underdog Queensland side with a runaway 90m try and the vision of jubilant coach Paul Vautin hugging manager Dick “Tosser’’ Turner in the grandstand is one of Origin’s most played highlights.

When his stint in Wigan came to an end he was saluted by a packed house in an emotional farewell at his home ground and took off his shoes and left them on the ground in a heartfelt sign-off that is still talked about today.

“When he left his boots on the centre of the DW Stadium pitch – it was one of those, ‘no, honestly, I’ve something in my eye’ moments – and received a guard of honour,’’ Phil Wilkinson, sports editor of the Wigan Post, told News Corp.

“I remember asking him minutes later if he had any regrets about his career, staying at Wigan so long. ‘Yeah, not buying property,’ he joked – property prices had shot up over his time here.

“If you asked people of a certain age who were the best Wigan wingers of the past 20 years they would say Pat Richards and Brett Dallas.’’

Dallas joined Wigan in 2000 on a two-year contract but a mutual love affair extended to seven winters and he played 156 games and scored 89 tries for the English powerhouse.

English fans, Wilkinson included, are disturbed by his decline.

“There’s certainly been a lot of interest and sadness about his plight, and that is a reflection of how highly he is thought of in Wigan. He was good company, quiet and unassuming.

“In fact, I remember moving house in about 2002 and Brett was helping a mate move out of the property we were buying. We had a chat.

“An hour or so later, he nipped back unexpectedly to help me unpack, even plumbed in our washing machine. But there were signs over the last few years that he was struggling.

“When I was in Sydney in 2014 for the World Club Challenge, the club was trying to reach many former players to invite them for a function at The Rocks, and I was told then by one of his former teammates that he wasn’t in a great place.

“Without knowing the details I was told he had been offered help, to no avail.’’

Brett Dallas (C) celebrating with family members.

One thing no-one disputes is Dallas’ potency as a player.

“He was quick, obviously, but he had so many other attributes which made him a firm fans’ favourite: his toughness and competitiveness, his consistency and his humility.’’

Dallas’s plight has brought the soft side out of hard men like his former North Sydney and Queensland teammate Gary Larson. “I am probably not the only one who feels ashamed that in some way we could have helped him out more,’’ Larson said.

“You have to go your own different ways but it’s a shame in some ways that he was not living closer to many of us. He was overseas for a few years. We were only a phone call away but that’s much different to be able to knock on his door and say ‘how are you going?’

“When you are playing rugby league you have the support of a club system around you but once you leave it can be very difficult and challenging.

“He was a terrific bloke and great footballer when he was at North Sydney. He was very quiet, kept to himself and did everything asked of him and more.

“If ever he wanted to have a chat I would love to help but I do feel it has probably moved past that to the point where he needs professional help. That is the way to go. He has a lot of health and personal issues he has to sort out.’’

Brett Dallas in action in 1995.

Before his latest indiscretions, Dallas had never been convicted of possessing drugs, but there seems little doubt he had been in the grip of them.

In a post on his incoherent Twitter feed in February 2018 he claimed “cocaine is one hell of a drug” beneath a photo of a trickle of blood falling from his nose. He “remembered that day blowing part of my nose out”.

Teammates who remember him as the quiet country kid who kept a lot inside – the fact that he still does is seen as part of his problem – were distressed by the change in him and desperately hope he will see better days.

“He was a quirky, funny bugger, you know, in the change rooms,’’ Moore said.

“We had some larrikins in the room who you thought would be behind the pranks then you’d find out it was BD. He had quite a dry sense of humour.”

Following a string of shoplifting offences, Dallas told a court in January last year he needed to steal board shorts because people kept taking his clothes and he did not want to ask his parents for money because he wanted to fend for himself.

Mackay magistrate Damien Dwyer told him: “The last thing anyone wants is for you to go to prison but unless you can show me that the community is safe, I’m looking at prison. Enough is enough.

“Whatever the difficulty is, you’ve got to sort it now.”

Brett Dallas Walks out of Mackay Police Station. Picture: Daryl Wright.

Moore noted Dwyer’s lament at having to threaten a once celebrated local star with a jail sentence.

“I think the judges can see someone who came down from Mackay and made a star of himself and could hopefully save himself,’’ Moore said.

“Here is someone who was a shining light, someone who inspired a lot of country kids. And then he came down the wrong path.’’

Dallas joined the Canterbury Bulldogs immediately after graduating from Mackay’s St Patrick’s College in 1992, and his profile soon soared.

He made his Queensland debut within a year at 18 years and 225 days, at that time the Maroons’ youngest State of Origin player.

His old teammates never get sick of talking about his 90m State of Origin try or expressing their hope that he can fight his way off the canvas of life.

“That runaway try in State of Origin was a great moment and I can still hear Gary Belcher’s commentary ... “they have stuck the boot in,’’ Moore said.

“He was one of those players who you had on your side because he never let you down.

“But Brett’s hands are now on the steering wheel of his own life. It comes to how much he wants to change.’’