The week without sleep, the hospital admission, and the confrontation in the street. Former Hawks chief Justin Reeves has broken his silence on the crippling mental and physical toll of footy’s messiest chapter — the Hawthorn racism saga.
Justin Reeves happily serves the football crowd tasty paninis and coffee-on-the-go about 800m from the MCG.
On game day, there’s the rush as people line-up out the door for a saucy meatball or crumbed chicken sandwich before the matches begin.
The man who ran the Hawthorn Football Club as chief executive from 2017-23 now does his best work behind a counter in his Richmond cafe, Mr Bartolo.
And importantly – after the most intense and difficult time of his career which saw Reeves end up in bad way in hospital – he’s happy again.
“People come in and have a chat about footy and I love it. I love talking about the game,” Reeves, 55, told the Herald Sun.
“You see the same people coming in from the local neighbourhood or on their way to a game and it is real community.
“And I’m really enjoying it. I love it and I leave with a smile on my face.”
About two years ago, however, that was far from the case.
Hawthorn had been shattered by the devastating racism saga on the back of a monumental decision to change coach and a board coup.
And at its most arduous period, the string of sleepless nights and stress took a severe toll on Reeves.
People confronted him in the streets of Richmond and on one walk along Fairhaven beach with his wife, Suzie, she worryingly thought the saga could push him to the brink.
In his first interview since stepping away from the Hawks in 2023, Reeves was at pains to say how much he felt for everyone involved in the Hawthorn racism saga and the distressing allegations at the heart of one of football’s messiest chapters.
As an AFL club CEO, he wanted to be bulletproof throughout that period.
But by the end, Reeves was broken.
And barely able to get out of bed.
“I would lie awake all night and my mind would just be racing,” he said.
“At one stage I don’t think I slept for a week.
“So, you are watching the hours go by and then you have got to try to get up and go again.
“It was relentless – the media side of things because it was non-stop and you have got staff who are hearing all of it, and some of it was false, but we couldn’t really say anything.
It left me exhausted. Stressed. I was mentally and physically sick. I got really sick. I remember being so sick there was a time when I couldn’t get out of bed.
“I was as low as you could possibly imagine.”
At work, and in the public eye, the man who worked at Collingwood and Geelong and counts Brian Cook and Graham Wright among his closest friends and mentors, tried to hide his suffering.
Until he couldn’t.
That is when his wife took him to hospital due to his waning mental and physical health.
“I admitted myself to hospital,” Reeves said.
“So it was devastating for me, but it was devastating for everyone involved. There were a lot of reputations which were tarnished. And I didn’t think that was fair.
“There were no winners, only losers and good people on both sides.
“What gets you, though, is that everyone had an opinion, either way.
“Whether it (the racism saga) was bull---- or a disgrace or whatever.
“I couldn’t get involved in discussions because I was bound by confidentiality, but everyone wants to talk to you about it, so my only real response was to say nothing because I couldn’t.
“Some people almost wanted to fight with me, a couple of times. One guy stopped me in the street in Richmond. He got out of his car and had a crack at me.
“He told me it was all bull---- and a witch hunt and people were bringing the club down.”
The tipping point came on a walk along the beach with his wife the day after a mate’s birthday. His lifelong friends could all see he was not in a good way.
And it was that love, support and concern, in particular from his wife, his five brothers and sisters, and two children who saved him.
“I remember the day. Suzie was saying to me, ‘You can’t keep doing this. Something has to change because this is going to kill you’,” he said.
“So it got dark, very much so. It got really dark because you want to box on and appear to be bulletproof.
So I bottled a lot of things up and it got to the stage where it boiled over and I was really worried about what I might do because I felt like I had lost control of myself for a short period.
“I knew that I couldn’t step through this anymore and I needed to flick a switch and leave, and that wasn’t easy either.
“It was better for the club, and certainly for me, that we had a change, and it was the right time.
“As much as I loved the club and had re-signed for another five years, it was the right time for both of us for me to walk away.”
Reeves, whose son Ned plays at Hawthorn, departed the club in May 2023 and went overseas for a holiday to help begin the healing process.
But the scars remain, and if the club had its time over again, things could be done differently.
One of the biggest problems was that Hawthorn never knew how severe or complex the racism saga would become after its initial inquiries and concerns.
The ex-CEO remembers where he was standing on a Richmond street when he got the call about the first article involving Cyril Rioli and his wife Shannyn, which lit the fuse on the racism saga.
Reeves rang then president, Jeff Kennett, Hawks champion Shaun Burgoyne, Rioli’s uncle Michael Long and Rioli’s mother, Cathy.
He also rang Rioli repeatedly, but there was no answer.
“First and foremost I was concerned about Cyril,” Reeves said.
“But I wasn’t able to speak with him.”
From there, the club decided to check in with all its Indigenous players, past and present, to see if there were any other issues.
And if there were problems, could the club help?
Quickly, the club realised it needed an Indigenous person with significant skills and experience to lead the process of making the phone calls.
That person was former Tiger Phil Egan.
“We decided that it was the best course of action for us was to check in with all Indigenous players who have ever been at Hawthorn, whether they had played zero games or were still playing, just to ask if they were OK?” Reeves said.
“It was a simple concept. ‘Are you OK and is there anything we could do to help you?’
“We started to do that and what became clear was that we weren’t equipped to do that.
“It was highly recommended to us that we needed an Indigenous person to do it.
But it got big. It got bigger than anyone expected it to be and we didn’t see it coming.
“We referred it to the AFL as soon as we got it (the responses) back because we thought they were best placed to deal with it.
“It was the only move.”
Had the club had its time over, the league could have ran the whole process from the start, rather than starting with the Hawthorn cultural safety review which was leaked in an ABC TV report on grand final week of 2022.
That is the moment the Hawks lost control of the crippling saga which was only resolved on draft day last year when there was a financial settlement out of Federal Court with three former players – Jermaine Miller-Lewis, Carl Peterson, the Riolis and former Indigenous officer Leon Egan.
The AFL’s twin investigations found no adverse findings against the four men accused of leading a racist regime at Waverley – Alastair Clarkson, Chris Fagan, Cameron Matthews and Jason Burt.
Reeves wants everyone to recover from the saga.
Football has been his whole life. He grew up at Arden St where his father, John, played 102 games for North Melbourne and eight for St Kilda, including the club’s first grand final against Essendon in 1950.
His brother, Michael, played 63 games for North and Fitzroy, and his nephews are Josh and Nate Caddy, a young star on the rise at Essendon.
Reeves is considering what his next step will be, whether it is a return to footy or sports administration, as he quietly mentors some emerging leaders as part of a side project.
He still goes to the footy to watch his son play and there are three football scarves on the hook inside his house, and they are brown and gold for when Ned runs out, blue and white – for Geelong – and black and white – for Collingwood.
He also has a soft spot for Carlton, where Wright will take over as CEO.
“If someone asked me who I barrack for I would say the Cats and the Pies. I go to the footy to watch Geelong and Collingwood, I still have great relationships at both of those clubs and they make me feel welcome,” he said.
“I catch up regularly with a lot of football people and I had dinner with a few of them as recently as last week and now I have an interest in Carlton – even though I never used to like Carlton – because two of my best mates are there.
“So I still love footy, and I still love talking footy. I just love it from a different angle now. Whether I work in it again, I’m not quite sure.
“I feel like I’m not that old and I feel like I have got more to give. Just working out whether I want to at the right stage and with the right group of people.”
Nine changes Voss can make to save his skin
The Blues’ year is over, and their season in shambles. Where to from here? Glenn McFarlane and Jon Ralph unpack the nine changes Michael Voss can make to keep his job.
Jay’s Top 50: Shock snubs as footy’s most patient man tumbles
In the first part of Jay Clark’s Top 50 AFL players, some of the game’s best slide, including the most patient man in footy. Who’s in, who’s out and who can consider themselves stiff?