SACKED podcast: Damian Drum reveals physical confrontation with Tony Lockett

You don’t mess with Plugger. Ex-Sydney assistant coach Damian Drum reveals on SACKED he learnt that lesson the hard way after attempting to lay hands on the great Tony Lockett.

Damian Drum reveals his physical confrontation with Tony Lockett.

Sydney assistant coach Damian Drum found out the hard way about Tony Lockett’s firebrand temper as he revealed he once took his life in his own hands in a physical confrontation with the Swans spearhead.

Drum still cannot believe he attempted to lay his hands on Lockett given the Sydney star’s own temper and his reputation as an easy-going coach who had strong relationships with his players.

Drum took most of the training sessions under Ron Barassi at Sydney but when Rodney Eade was appointed coach he found himself organising extra physio and medical sessions for the club’s stars as part of his duties.

He still laughs as he remembers Lockett lifting him up the wall with a single hand around his neck in a confrontation that he somehow started.

PART ONE: DAMIAN DRUM REVEALS 1989 GRAND FINAL SECRET

PART TWO: DAMIAN DRUM ON ALMOST TAKING OVER AT COLLINGWOOD

PART THREE: DAMIAN DRUM SPRAYS RON BARASSI

“It doesn’t reflect greatly on my ability to read players, but ‘Rocket’ (Eade) had a team meeting on the Monday,” he told the Herald Sun’s Sacked podcast.

“And he takes the players through the game and he says, ‘Right, now it’s over to Drummy to work out all your additional training sessions and work out what you’re doing. So I read the form and it says additional weights for Smith Jones and Brown.

Damian Drum at Sydney training, helping Troy Luff take high marks.

“Additional cardio for these five players, and those who need to be in tomorrow for physio and doctors are Lockett and (Paul) Kelly.

“So at this stage, he’s got a dodgy knee and they’re more or less putting a needle in and sucking the extra fluid early in the week to enable that to get better so he can play next week. And we need him to turn up. So I know he’s not going to turn up. So as all the players are walking out at the exit the players are walking past me and Tony turns up.

I said, ‘Tony,’ and he doesn’t look up. I repeat ‘Tony,’ and he doesn’t look up. As he walks past me I put my hand around his throat.

“He says, ‘Take your hand off’. I said, ‘Mate, I need you’. He says, ‘Take your f—--- hand off’.

“So I’ve got to make a decision now in front of 20 guys. And I am blocking the doorway. Tony is telling me to take my hand off him. I decide to double down and put a bit of a squeeze on, saying, ‘Mate, I need you. Just tell me you’re gonna be there’.

Tony Lockett could lose his temper, from time to time.

“The next thing his hand is around my throat and I am thinking, ‘I have got this so wrong’.

Then I start to feel my feet leave the ground. He is sliding my back up against the wall. I said mate, ‘I tap out, you win’.”

Drum told Sacked he eventually made up with Lockett but not before learning a valuable lesson about the AFL goalkicking record holder’s tolerance for physicality.

“He didn’t turn up for the doctor and he ignored me for the next month and then we break it down and it’s all good. And I go back to him and say, ‘Mate, why? Why are you so fierce about what should have been a bit of a joke and he says ‘Mate no one touches me. Not aggressively. And you should have known better’. And I said, ‘Yeah, you are right, I should have known better”.

“So you get a few things wrong along the way and that’s my best story about what I got wrong with Plugger. But along with a few others he effectively saved that club and accelerated its path towards success.”

Originally published as SACKED podcast: Damian Drum reveals physical confrontation with Tony Lockett