Laurence Angwin opens up about his time at the Adelaide Crows, his regrets and thinking he was “going to be an AFL superstar”
Laurence Angwin has opened up about his time at the Crows, saying his biggest regret from his turbulent 13 months there was being too immature to accept the club’s help.
National
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- Part 1: How Crows’ highest ever draftee became ‘spectacular failure’
- Part 2: Where it all went wrong for Crows and Angwin
Laurence Angwin says his biggest regret from his turbulent 13 months at the Crows is being too immature to accept the club’s help and trying to take on the football world himself.
Now based in the Victorian country town of Mildura, where he lives with his fiancee and two-year-old son, works as an irrigation officer and plays for Ouyen United’s reserves, Angwin has opened up about how he thought he “was going to be an AFL superstar” after joining Adelaide via pick seven at the 2000 national draft.
Instead, the 200cm ruckman made headlines for the wrong reasons from the moment pre-season training began, struggling to train, crashing his car and getting arrested for drink-driving, then mutually agreeing to part ways with Adelaide in December 2001 without ever playing a game for the club.
Angwin, now 36, has this week told The Advertiser the Crows were “absolutely fantastic” to him and “put up with a lot” but, at 18, he was unable to cope with the demands of being an AFL player.
“I tried to take on the world and do it all myself, and once I realised I couldn’t do that, I really started to struggle,” says Angwin, who had been an apprentice plumber and lived in Melbourne with his parents before joining Adelaide.
“(At the Crows) you had (Andrew) McLeod and (Tyson) Edwards, Bicks (Mark Bickley), (Mark) Ricciuto and (Brett) Burton – absolute champions of the game.
“I should have tried to make them my mentors rather than think ‘I’ve made it here, I’m going to be a superstar’ – it just doesn’t work like that.
“I didn’t accept the help that was there or ask for more help when I needed – I thought I knew it all and didn’t expect it to be as hard as it was.
“The Crows bent over backwards for me and I was not mature enough to handle it.
“I didn’t understand the opportunity that they’d given me.
“I don’t think there’d have been much difference if I was pick seven or if I was pick 107.”
Angwin attributes lots of his mistakes at Adelaide to being “young and dumb” – including crashing his car near Moonta four weeks before the start of the 2001 season – and not having anyone dragging him into line like his “strict” parents did growing up.
The lifelong Hawthorn fan recalls his excitement at realising his AFL dream initially outweighing his concerns about moving out of home and interstate.
“You play a game, you go all right and all of a suddenly people want to be your mate and things got a little out of hand,” he says.
“I probably went too far but there was no one pulling me back saying ‘hey, let’s tone this down a little bit’.
“I wish I did things different but I didn’t.
“It took me a long time to wake up to myself and to grow up and mature and become the person I am now.”
But Angwin says many of the stories still bandied around today about his time at the Crows are false or embellished, such as eating an entire sponge cake for a dare and playing a SANFL game for Glenelg hours after returning home from a night of drinking.
Angwin also denies being kicked out by his host family for stealing former teammate and housemate Michael Handby’s 18th birthday money.
The anecdote about drinking a bottle of wine and smoking a cigarette while standing on a table in Glenelg’s function room after earning two Magarey Medal votes in a SANFL game has been “exaggerated a little bit”, he says.
“There was no doubt I could play footy,” says Angwin, who kicked six goals and grabbed 11 marks in a TAC Cup under-18 game in 2000.
It was at Glenelg that Angwin felt most at home while in Adelaide and jelled better with his teammates.
The players there were more “knockabout”, the level of commitment less demanding.
Glenelg’s coach at the time, Brenton Honor, recalls hearing some concerns about Angwin’s behaviour but him being fantastic for the club.
Honor says Angwin never missed trainings, went to club promotional days, tried harder than anyone on the football field and caught the eye with his ability.
“Every time he played for us, I couldn’t fault him,” Honor says.
“His attitude and commitment to Glenelg was first class.
“He was really likeable, very respectful.
“He had a raw natural talent that he probably didn’t appreciate or know what to do with but it
was there for everyone to see.
“It’s just a shame he didn’t realise that potential because, my god, he could’ve been anything.”
Angwin sustained a season-ending shoulder injury for Glenelg in June 2000.
Homesickness and frustration at being sidelined set in, although in hindsight he “should have latched onto someone (at the Crows) to find out how they got through”.
During his time off, Angwin got arrested for drink-driving and running a red light.
By December, he and the club had had enough of each other, leading the former Dandenong Stingray to return to Melbourne.
“I hurt my shoulder again and things weren’t going that well, and I just couldn’t handle being there and doing that,” he says.
“It was definitely mutual.
“I probably annoyed a lot of people because they saw me as a bit of a wasted talent at the end.”
Angwin says the “wasted talent” and “troublemaker” tags followed him around Australia after Carlton sacked him and he played in various community football leagues for a decade.
“All you’ve got to do is type ‘Laurence’ in Google and I think I’m the second or third
Laurence to come up,” says Angwin, who featured in four AFL games for the Blues.
“If people ask me questions I’ll answer the questions, but I don’t go out and advertise it (AFL career) because it’s nothing I’m very proud of.”
Angwin says he had been depressed and hating life with “no real direction, no purpose, no responsibilities, nothing” while travelling the country as “a bit of a lost cause”.
But two significant things happened: he joined Ouyen United and moved to the Sunraysia region, which he called probably the best decision of life because he met his fiancee there, and began to accept that his mistakes were his own fault.
He reckons he has changed “a hell of a lot” since being in the AFL.
“It took a little country town that accepted all of my mistakes and didn’t judge me on any of that to make me feel like it was a place I sort of belonged,” says Angwin, who is getting married in June and has a two-year-old son, Oliver.
“I fell in love with the town and the people, and they’ve shown me the respect back.
“I regret a lot, I’ve moved on ... and I’ve accepted everything that’s happened, and now I can look in the mirror and go ‘you’re not a bad bloke’.
“I really couldn’t do that six, seven, 10 years ago.”
Even though he has found contentment in Mildura and at Ouyen United, Angwin remains a target for verbal barrages in the Sunraysia league’s reserves competition.
“There’s certain clubs you like to play against because their supporters like to throw a bit of abuse, try to say some stuff to get me off my game, but I feed off that,” he says.
“And I suppose I feed off that because I own my mistakes, I own what’s happened and there’s nothing really people can say that’s going to upset me.
“People say ‘I’d give my left arm to have the opportunity you had’ and I’m like ‘yeah, but if you gave me your left arm, you wouldn’t make it with one arm’.”
These days, Angwin plays at full-forward and is having team success, winning his first ever senior premiership last year.
Just like evergreen Hawthorn star and fellow 2000 draftee Shaun Burgoyne, Angwin plans to pull on the boots again next season.
Angwin featured only twice this year due to a knee injury.
“I’m clunking them and kicking them well – that was never an issue,” he says.
“In country footy, you use a bit of nous and seem to find yourself in the right positions more times than you don’t.”
Angwin is also having an impact at Ouyen United off the field.
In recent seasons, he has spent time mentoring some of the club’s juniors, particularly while sidelined with injury.
Ouyen United vice-president Jarrod Munro says the club is aware of Angwin’s chequered past but has never had any issues with the ex-AFL player.
“He’s probably mellowed a little bit and he’s a really good fella,” Munro says.
“When he was injured, he made himself available to help out around the junior team and he was brilliant.
“The kids know his history but when he speaks out on the footy ground in the huddle, these boys are listening and have great respect for him.
“It’s a credit to Laurie for putting himself out there when he could quite easily have walked away from it.
“I’m rapt with him the way he’s got himself to where he is now.”
From mad Hawthorn fan and junior star to becoming a troubled draftee then a “wasted talent” and now a mentor to youngsters.
Calling Angwin’s journey a rollercoaster is a massive understatement, but through it all he says his passion for footy has not diminished.
It is why he enjoys giving back to the game that has helped make him, break him and redeem himself.
“To be involved in footy in any way is what I’ll do forever, whether that be running water or mentoring kids,” he says.
“If I can help out the young kids and let them know there’s people to ask for help, don’t be afraid to ask for help on and off the field, and where to run, how to get an easy kick, footy in general.
“I’ve been through it all and done all the dumb things.
“I’ve always loved footy – it’s been my life – I just wasn’t ready for life to be footy in the AFL.”
Originally published as Laurence Angwin opens up about his time at the Adelaide Crows, his regrets and thinking he was “going to be an AFL superstar”
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