How Martin Kennedy almost lost it all, and then found himself in prison
Martin Kennedy lost his $1.5 million contract, his family, his freedom and almost his life. Now the former NRL star is making the most remarkable of comebacks, writes Phil Rothfield.
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Martin Kennedy was once an NRL star with a $1.5 million contract.
After eight years on the sidelines – the result of a doping suspension, a jail sentence and an attempted suicide – the former Sydney Roosters and Brisbane Broncos forward is making a remarkable comeback.
The pay packet this time is $500-a-week in match payments with the old North Sydney Bears – and he’s not ruling out playing NRL again.
This now 34-year-old, once a private school captain and a footballer on the cusp of playing State of Origin, lost his career and his young family through stupidity.
The fall of the $500,000-a-year NRL star … busted and banned for using performance-enhancing drugs in 2015 and then arrested two years later and jailed for attempting to illegally export and smuggle hundreds of thousands of dollars’ worth of rare reptiles overseas.
A footballer who played 82 NRL matches prior to his arrest.
Kennedy captained his old boarding school Ipswich Grammar and excelled in his tertiary education.
You talk to him and find such an intelligent and articulate man.
Someone far too smart to so foolishly break the law, spend more than two years in prison and make the mistakes that he has.
THE REPTILES
Kennedy’s childhood hero was the crocodile hunter Steve Irwin.
“I was completely obsessed by him,” Kennedy said in an old interview, “For me it started out as a niche hobby.”
He and a business partner purchased the Snake Ranch at Ourimbah on the Central Coast. They became Australia’s biggest reptile breeders.
Away from footy he devoted every spare hour to the business.
And then, while serving a two-year anti-doping ban from the NRL, he set up a scheme to sell overseas.
Snakes, lizards, turtles, stingrays and fish were illegally shipped to other countries for huge profits.
Most were intercepted by border authorities.
One shipment bound for Sweden in July 2016 contained 24 shingleback lizards, worth up to $350,000 on the European market.
THE ARREST
It’s February 2017 and Kennedy is back at the Roosters and playing trials after his NRL ban.
What happened next changed his life forever.
He starts explaining: “It was like a scene from a movie. It was pretty surreal.
“I was at home at Bondi. Just a normal night. Dinner and TV.
“And then the door gets kicked off its hinges. It’s the AFP boys. It felt like a riot.
“I was on the ground and there were about 12 of them standing over me. I was handcuffed.
“They pulled the house apart for six to eight hours.
“Lucky my wife and daughter weren’t home to see it.”
He was taken away and charged.
SENTENCING
It was a long process in which Kennedy spent two years on bail.
The judge eventually ordered him to do 700 hours community service.
He worked as an assistant at the Vinnies store in Bondi.
“I got stuck into it six or seven days a week,” he said.
“I got up to 692 hours then the police appealed and said the sentence was manifestly inadequate.
“I then faced the supreme court and got two-and-a-half years in jail.”
PRISON
Kennedy started at Muswellbrook Correctional Centre and was then transferred to Windsor.
“Most of it was during Covid,” he said, “Because of that I basically didn’t see my partner or my kids from February 2020 until I walked out in April 2022.”
It cost him his family … his partner and children Jasmyn, who is now 7, and Thomas, 4.
“To be honest I can’t say I hated jail in its entirety,” Kennedy said, “although it wasn’t a holiday.
“You’re mixing with career criminals or just people like me.
“I actually looked at it as an opportunity and tried to make the best of it.
“It was a unique situation that not everyone gets to experience.
“It has instilled a level of perspective and understanding.
“Until you’ve gone to jail and been through the mental anguish of not getting out for a number of years and not seeing your loved ones, it’s interesting to go through it.
“If you’re self-reflective enough to understand the way you’re feeling, it can be a beneficial experience.
“I got to read a lot. I did some study on health science. A lot of writing.”
He says he met good, genuine people.
“It was overwhelming to see so many were the product of rough upbringings,” he said.
“Some who got dealt really shitty cards. You wonder if they’d be inside if they’d had a more advantageous past.
“Some are the product of some nightmarish things that happened to them.”
KIDS AND PARTNER
We start talking of his biggest loss. It gets emotional.
“The kids didn’t sign up for having their dad being put away,” he said.
“It’s not something they should ever have had to go through.
“We separated while I was inside. You can imagine it was difficult going a bit over two years not seeing each other.
“We were allowed six-minute phone calls. That was the hardest thing.”
Kennedy is now reunited with his children. He has access each week.
It’s a major motivation that’s driving this comeback: “My kids had never seen me play before.”
SUICIDE ATTEMPT
When Kennedy was banned under the NRL’s anti-doping rules he thought of taking his own life.
“The circumstances in which it fell to pieces left me with this complete feeling of loss and emptiness,” he explains.
“I would have willingly died to play footy. That’s what the game meant to me.
“So I fell into a dark spot. I felt like the worst bloke on the face of the earth.
“I tried to neck myself. The sense of shame was so overwhelming. You just spiral.
“You feel like you’ve lost everything that’s worth living for. To look back now it’s laughable.
“I lived in Vaucluse and I was on my way to the Gap. I was off and ready to go.
“My missus at the time stopped me.”
It led him to the reptile trafficking crime.
“You lose the sense of responsibility to do the right thing,” he said, “You’re not making decisions based on logical reason.
“Doing something that’s going to get yourself into trouble … you don’t want to be here anyway. So what does it matter?
“It’s like a form of self-sabotage. You have no concept of how dark things can become.”
THE COMEBACK
Crestwood Oval in Baulkham Hills is a long way from Magic Round at Suncorp Stadium.
It was here, in front of a few hundred fans, that Kennedy made his comeback to footy.
He played for the Hills Bulls, the North Sydney Bears’ feeder club, in the Ron Massey Cup.
The next step is making the Bears team under former NRL coach Jason Taylor.
“It was good to be back out there,” he said, “It felt the same, like nothing’s changed.
“There’s things in a game you just do. The muscle memory is still there.”
It came about after a coffee and a sandwich in Surry Hills in February with old Roosters teammates Jared Waerea-Hargreaves and Dylan Napa.
“I’d been keeping myself fit and training hard,” he said, “ and we started talking about footy.
“I was going to play some footy up on the north coast where I’ve got four brothers.
“It would have been nice but I’ve decided to have a shot with the Bears.”
NRL hopes
I asked Kennedy if he aspired to play NRL again.
“The only goal I have is to test myself,” he said, “I don’t know what that looks like yet.
“I’m pretty capable of suffering. I won’t shirk the hard work or the pain. I guess it’s whether or not age has wearied me.
“I can say now I’m in better nick than when I was 18 or 19.
“That’s in strength and fitness. Plus there’s some experience and perspective now.
“I love the game and so I’ve thrown myself into it.”
I ask one more time. Could this be one of the sport’s greatest comebacks after eight years.
Can you make it back to NRL level?
“I honestly don’t know,” he says, “There’s a little Roosters badge on the Norths jersey. It’s a start.
“I’ve had eight years out of the game. The aim is to come back and play some pretty decent footy in NSW Cup.
“Maybe it’s the example I can set that’s most important.
“A young footballer, 22 or 23, might lose a year to a bad knee injury. Maybe that’s where I can help most. That I’ve made it back after eight years.
“My perspective on life is completely different to what it was when I was that age as a young footballer. Losing one year isn’t the end of the world.
“To go back and play the game with that outlook is really exciting.”
The future
Kennedy is now doing a builder’s apprenticeship and is working for a property developer.
“I’ll end up doing something in property,” he says.
“I don’t think it would matter what I’m doing, I could be a chef, whatever, but when you come out of the environment I was in, you just grab hold of it so hard because you feel nothing can ever be as dire as that again.
“I wish I could take it all back now but I’ve been well and truly punished.
“And I’ve now got this new found level of gratitude.”
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