Former girlfriend of Collingwood’s Alan Didak reveals their volatile relationship in new book

BEING offered drugs in the loos, drunken public fights and getting lectured by die-hard fans in the street. According to Alan Didak’s ex, this is what life’s really like as a footy WAG.

Cassie Lane has written a telling new book on life as a Collingwood WAG. Picture: Tim Carrafa

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CASSIE Lane, the former girlfriend of notorious Collingwood player Alan Didak, has revealed details of their volatile relationship and life behind the scenes at one of Australia’s most famous sporting clubs.

In her new book, How to Dress a Dummy, Lane opens up on love, drugs and losing herself in the AFL bubble.
Read her exclusive book extract below.

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I’D mostly regarded football as being a bunch of boys with silly haircuts kicking an oddly shaped bundle of rubber, but sitting among the footerati made the spectacle feel momentous.

After each game, we all went to the Lexus Centre, where we had a drink while the boys changed.

Nathan Buckley, Collingwood’s captain at the time, was lovely and he went out of his way to ensure I settled in nicely, as did his wife.

During this time, I thought about the fairytales I’d fetishised as a child.

If there were an Aussie equivalent, this might just be it.

I wore beautiful gowns, attended exclusive events where photographers swarmed around us and, like Cinderella’s sisters, I even had trouble finding elegant shoes to fit my man-sized feet.

Girls approached to tell me that I was the luckiest girl alive.

Cassie Lane opens up about what life is really like as a WAG at Collingwood. Picture: Tim Carrafa

Lane with Alan Didak at the 2006 Brownlow. She says breaking up with Alan was difficult but ‘knew it was for the best’.

‘I’d kill myself to be you,’ a thirteen-year-old girl in a Number 4 Collingwood guernsey said to me while I was on the tram one day.

I’d had zero interest in dating a footballer and so had never considered the ramifications of doing so.

It was like being handed a Fendi mink from the cloakroom instead of your Supré anorak; you just accepted fate’s handout.

So I allowed myself to be swept along in the current.

I attended events, did photoshoots, participated in media interviews; I became a footballer’s girlfriend.

At the first ‘best and fairest’ event I attended with Alan, I got to meet some of the big shots, including Eddie McGuire.

Before everyone dispersed to their designated tables in the Crown Palladium, all team members and their partners were asked to gather in a meeting room.

Strictly no media were allowed, which was unusual.

We all looked at each other and shrugged as we stood in a spacious room generally used for high-end business meetings.

Eddie took to the podium with a microphone.

He thanked everyone for coming and then raised a scandal regarding leaked footage of Kate Moss doing cocaine in the toilet that was currently doing the rounds.

‘The media loves this type of story,’ Eddie explained.

‘A beautiful woman in the spotlight, inhaling drugs up her nose. I bring this up because I believe the wives and girlfriends of the Collingwood football team are just as answerable to our brand as the boys. Ladies, you have an important role to play.’

He scanned the room with a sombre gaze.

‘And we ask that you take this responsibility very....’ he paused for emphasis, ‘very …’ he paused again, ‘seriously’.

Eddie then finished off with stuff about football or some such nonsense.

We all shuffled out of the room.

On the way back to the Palladium, I ran into one of the players’ wives.

We both walked to a toilet cubicle and she called my name.

I turned to see her standing outside a cubicle clinging to a small filled baggy, shaking it in my direction.

‘Um …’ I hesitated, grappling with wanting to impress the popular girl, not wanting to be assassinated by Eddie Don’t-Do-Coke McGuire, and with my inherent inability to say no to scary people.

‘Yeah. Um. Nah’ I said, looking pained.

‘But thank you!’ I said with a manic smile before closing the cubicle door.

How to Dress a Dummy, out now.

About a year into Alan’s and my relationship, a men’s magazine asked me to participate in a ‘WAG edition’ photoshoot, including a cover shot, with three other footballers’ girlfriends.

I’d appeared on the cover of this magazine a few times during my modelling career and, although they paid well, I always regretted it.

Because of my relationship with Alan, I was getting extra attention from the media, the public, my family and friends, until I no longer knew where he ended and I began.

I wasn’t a talented footballer.

To be honest, I wasn’t particularly good at anything.

Except Pictionary; I was a goddamn wizard at Pictionary.

The only way I could justify this attention was by becoming the thing for which I was celebrated — a footballer’s girlfriend.

Not a psychology student, or a yoga teacher, or an aspiring writer, or a genius at word-associated drawings.

I was a prop.

As misguided as it was, participating in this shoot was my blundering attempt to declare my existence.

Lane - with Didak and their dog, Rocky - says their relationship issues were not unique among football couples.

Didak with Nathan Buckley. Cassie says Buckley was ‘lovely’ and ‘went out of his way’ to make her feel comfortable at the club, but asked her to leave a club function after a clash with Didak over a cigarette.

During the shoot, the interviewer asked us about what it was like to be a footballer’s girlfriend.

The other girls talked about how footballers are under a lot of pressure, which justifies their behaviour.

I’d heard this excuse a lot during my little dip into AFL culture.

It was like a mantra that reverberated throughout the league.

I witnessed men cheating, and not returning home for days without even troubling to make a phone call, behaviour at which the partners gritted their teeth and grinned, pushing their vexation down into their skinny (or pregnant) bellies.

The truth was, over time Alan had expected me to become his ideal image of a girlfriend.

He didn’t want me to have male friends, or drink too much alcohol, or wear revealing clothing, or have what he deemed the ‘wrong types of friends’, while none of these rules applied to him.

He frequently went out, often not returning until after the sun had risen.

But our issues weren’t unique.

I recognised the exact same patterns in many other relationships at the club, where Alan’s and the other boys’ standards were no doubt reinforced.

The few times I tried to talk to the girls about Alan’s behaviour, they waved their hands as if I’d blasphemed.

These boys weren’t ordinary, ergo, you shouldn’t expect an ordinary relationship.

WAGs should suck it up and be grateful.

It was nearing midnight when I arrived at the function.

The bar, which had recently been bought by one of the players, was located in a desolate industrial area.

The entire team, including the coach, who rarely made an appearance, was there to celebrate the new bar.

By the time I arrived, Alan was wasted.

He staggered towards me, lurched forward in a fumbling hug, mumbled, ‘Get drink,’ and shuffled away.

Although I’d recently quit smoking, I had trouble abstaining when I was at social functions.

Alan hated me smoking, but he couldn’t see straight and I figured he wasn’t the boss of me, anyway.

I bummed a cigarette from one of the girls.

As I was lighting it, bending over to shield it from the wind, I felt a sharp push in the centre of my back and stumbled forward.

I turned around.

Alan was glowering at me, his red-eyed, determined stare creating a steady centre of balance.

‘What are you doing?’ he shouted.

Faces turned in our direction.

‘It’s okay, Alan.’

I flicked the cigarette over the balcony and raised my hands.

‘Just calm down.’

Cassie poses for a Brownlow Medal fashion shoot.

A Collingwood sports psychologist once phoned Lane urging her to get back together with Didak after their split, saying ‘Cassie, these boys are under so much pressure’. For a second she considered it.

Alan proceeded to yell an extensive list of the worst names he could think to call me.

I turned and gazed at the horrified faces staring at us.

I then ran to the bathroom.

Once I finally had my bearings, I left the bathroom and walked towards the bar.

Nathan approached me.

‘You okay, Cass?’ he asked.

‘Yeah.’

I forced a smile.

‘I think so.’

‘Look …’ he paused, clearly struggling to choose the right words, ‘I really think it’s best that you leave.’

I looked up at Nathan, confused.

He gestured behind him.

I then noticed that the crowd were staring with that exact same expression as before.

Not at Alan; at me.

I had mistaken their expressions for sympathy.

But it wasn’t dismay at Alan’s behaviour that turned their eyes to slits and made them shake their heads.

It was condemnation because I couldn’t keep my man calm.

And disbelief that I was still there antagonising him.

Alan had been fine until I’d arrived.

If I left, he’d revert to his boys-will-be-boys antics.

One WAG gasped loudly, and turned to her friend, shaking her head.

I tried not to cry as I fled the venue.

Once alone, I wept as I walked the empty streets, lost and desperate to get home.

Alan was genuinely sorry the morning after, and I found it difficult not to fall in love with him again.

I was invested in the relationship by then and I tried to find a solution to our problems, attempting to understand why Alan’s self-esteem was so inextricably tied to the kind of woman he was with.

And, perhaps, in retrospect, I also turned a blind eye to, and tried on the ethos of, the AFL culture.

Alan was, in some respects, one of the kindest people I’d ever known and I adored him for that.

He had a goofy sense of humour, and would put on silly voices and imitate movie stars, making me laugh until my stomach ached.

The two of us would spend whole weekends alone together, sleeping in all day, cuddling on the couch, eating takeaway and making each other cry with laughter.

Things would be going well between us, and then Alan would go back to training.

By the end of each day, his attitude would change.

We were together at a time when Alan was becoming more and more well-known.

His ego grew, forming a hard shell that made it increasingly impossible to reach him.

For every step forward, we’d take three steps back.

Lane says Didak was one of the kindest people she’d ever known and adored him for that. But his “ego grew, forming a hard shell that made it increasingly impossible to reach him”.

Didak and club president Eddie McGuire.

One night, I was at a bar and Alan turned up drunk.

He saw me talking to a man and had a paroxysm, calling me the usual litany of slut-related labels.

Neither of us knew we were standing next a journalist.

When I saw the giant photograph of the two of us on the front cover of the Sunday Herald Sun the following morning, I did a double take.

Because our dirty laundry had been aired, the public felt they had permission to provide their unsolicited opinions.

Fanatical Collingwood supporters approached me on the street, reprimanding me for being ungrateful, lecturing me on my role as the girlfriend of a footy legend.

Alan was a legend.

He was loved.

If someone was going to go down in their estimation, it certainly wasn’t going to be the talented one.

I was just a brainless girl, leeching off Dids’s fame.

I should’ve adhered to the unwritten contract one enters when dating a footballer; I should’ve been better at playing a ‘footballer’s girlfriend’.

The next time I went to the Lexus Centre to wait for Alan after a game, I brought a friend.

When she approached a table that had mountains of free food, the WAG who’d once offered me cocaine stopped her.

‘This is for the partners only,’ she hissed, one eyebrow raised like a cobra about to fight.

My friend looked around at the ten people in the room and then back at the free food, which could have fed fifty men.

The WAG strode back to her clique, whispered to them and then sniggered while pointing my way.

With tears in her eyes, my friend insisted on leaving, unsure why any sane person would want to be a part of that world.

Lane said fanatical Collingwood supporters often approached her in the street, lecturing her on her role as a footy star’s girlfriend. Picture: Tim Carrafa

Breaking up with Alan was difficult, but I knew it was for the best.

In hindsight, we were together for all the wrong reasons.

There was a spare room in a friend’s share house in Elwood so I agreed to move in there.

Alan implored me to stay.

My bags packed, I stood at the front door and simply shook my head, knowing that if I opened my mouth, I’d never stop crying.

I walked away slowly, without turning back.

Until the Collingwood sports psychologist called me a few days later. ‘Alan’s not doing so well,’ the psychologist told me.

‘Me either.’

‘I mean, I think you should give him another chance. You have to understand, Cassie, these boys are under so much pressure. He really needs you to come back.’

For a second, I considered it.

I considered not having to be responsible for myself, not having to be lonely, not having to deal with the dread of floating unanchored.

But then I looked at the calendar in my phone.

It was Thursday.

No doubt they just needed Dids back to his jovial, competitive self before Saturday’s game.

‘He needs something. But I’m not it,’ I said.

I hung up and sobbed.

I realised, though, as I wiped the tears away that I had finally become a self-respecting grown-up.

This is an edited extract from How to Dress a Dummy by Cassie Lane (Affirm Press), RRP $29.99, available June 28.

Buy How to Dress a Dummy by Cassie Lane for $27.99 including delivery.

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