Danny Southern and Peter Sumich share hug and bury hatchet over vicious brawl in 1994
PETER Sumich had said he had no interest in making up with Danny Southern after the former Footscray defender almost choked him to death in an on-field stoush in 1994. But the pair have buried the hatchet after a chance meeting.
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FOOTBALL’S longest cold war is over with Peter Sumich and Danny Southern burying the hatchet after a chance meeting at the Fremantle Markets on Saturday.
The pair shook hands and hugged after Sumich accepted Southern’s apology for almost choking him to death in a game at Subiaco back in 1994.
Sumich had previously stated he had no interest in making up with the former Footscray defender but was pleased they could both now finally move on.
The former West Coast champion was having a coffee with WA talent manager Michael Ablett and former Eagles assistant Tony Micale after watching an under 18s Colts game when he felt a tap on the shoulder.
“You could see he was very nervous,” Sumich told Fox Footy.
“He shook all of our hands and didn’t know what was going to happen in a sense of how I was going to react.
“He just wanted to apologise and say sorry and put it to bed. I just told him no problems and that it’s all good.
“I said it’s all done and dusted, it’s great and don’t worry about it. I said ‘you’ve got a young family, a beautiful wife, and you need to move on and we both have’.”
“At the end he said ‘Look, can I give you a hug?’I said ‘Yeah mate, no problems.’ And that was it.”
Southern appeared on Fox Footy’s Open Mike last month and admitted the thought of a reaching out to Sumich had been on his mind since the interview with Mike Sheahan.
“The circumstances had never presented themselves. I personally didn’t feel comfortably just calling him out of the blue to chat,” Southern said.
“It has been a long time and I’ve never had the opportunity before. I chatted to my wife and she said the timing was perfect.
“She told me to get off my seat and go and do it. I was going to but was still a little bit apprehensive. I gave him a hug and thought was the least I could do.
“I couldn’t have asked for it to go any better to be honest.”
NFL FATHER FIGURE YOUR REAL DAD
A HEART-WARMING story from the NFL involving a shock paternity revelation.
Kansas City Chiefs running backs coach Deland McCullough was given up for adoption after his mother gave birth to him at the age of 16 after a brief fling with a young man who’d already left her hometown in Youngstown, Ohio.
She decided not to tell the young man of his pending fatherhood.
Fast forward almost two decades and McCullough, who had become a star high school footballer, was recruited to Miami University by the college’s running backs coach Sherman Smith.
Smith, known as “The Tank” during his playing days with the Seattle Seahawks, went on to help guide his former team to victory in the 2014 Super Bowl.
McCullough ended up playing one season in the NFL with Cincinnati Bengals before embarking on his own coaching career with Smith as his mentor and confidante.
In 2017 McCullough decided to search for his biological parents with new laws meaning he could unseal his adoption records.
He managed to track down his birth mother via Facebook and arranged to meet. It was there where she revealed the name of his father ... Sherman Smith.
THE WHISPER
WHICH former AFL player at two clubs is set to take the unusual step of becoming a club media manager?
Originally published as Danny Southern and Peter Sumich share hug and bury hatchet over vicious brawl in 1994