That affair: What Wayne Carey says happened with Kelli Stevens

I CAN trace my downfall -- the time when my life and everything that I held dear began to slowly unravel -- to the last month or two of 2001.

I CAN trace my downfall -- the time when my life and everything that I held dear began to slowly unravel -- to the last month or two of 2001.

That was when I started flirting with Kelli Stevens, the wife of my vice-captain and close friend Anthony Stevens.

Kelli and I had known each other for at least 10 years.

Kelli and I were the party animals while Sally and Stevo were much more responsible and mature.

It became a bit of a joke between us: Sally and Stevo were the stiffs who went to bed early while Kelli and I were wanting to stay out late and find something more to drink.

Then something happened in our relationship that is difficult to explain or pinpoint.

In November 2001 my younger brother Sam, who had got to know Stevo quite well, invited him and Kelli to his wedding in Wagga. It was 10 months after Sally and I were married.

At the end of a boozy night Sally, Kelli and I went back to our hotel room in town, while Stevo headed to his own room, because he had a late one the night before.

Sally, ever the sensible one, went to bed while Kelli and I, as usual, were looking for something more to drink, any excuse to stay up longer and have a good time.

We were sitting in chairs near the bed where Sally was asleep, just talking and drinking.

It was then, very late at night, that our conversation suddenly developed a distinctly sexual connotation.

I can't remember exactly what was said but there was no mistaking the tone. It was suggestive, and we found we were flirting with each other.

Sally was only half asleep and said later she thought she heard a few of the comments. Understandably, she wasn't too happy about it. But I said that Kelli and I were just talking drunk nonsense.

Yet, that night of Sam's wedding triggered something. We became more flirtatious from then on. After having been just friends for so long, suddenly this suggestive, sexual teasing entered the relationship.

I WAS perhaps naive, but I never thought the flirting would amount to anything -- certainly I never imagined that Kelli and I would sleep together. I just saw it as harmless fun.

Sally and Kelli were very good friends. I don't think Sally necessarily agreed with everything Kelli did, or how she behaved. As I said, Kelli was probably more like me so that's probably why Sally didn't agree with it.

But around this time, the two of them began to speak on the phone more and more. And we started to go to more functions together, and out to dinner more regularly.

Sally by now was a lot more suspicious, and demanding to know if anything was going on. Again, I said there was nothing to worry about. In my opinion, at the time, there wasn't.

Yes, we were mucking around a bit in a silly flirtatious way, but it had not gone beyond that.

But Sally had picked up a sort of sexual tension in the air.

Into the new year, Kelli and I started talking on the phone more frequently.

I remember telling Kelli in one conversation that Sally thinks something is going on between us, but and I made a point of stressing this to Kelli: "I told Sally nothing's happened and nothing's going to happen." Almost as if I was trying to convince myself that nothing would come of this silly flirting.

We kept in pretty constant contact at the start of 2002. That's when things began to take a turn for the worse.

As much as I wanted to stop this banter and sexual innuendo because I could see where it was heading, I was also drawn towards it, in a way that I can't really explain.

IT was another of those situations that I probably, through some very warped reasoning, could have justified in my head at the time.

But, looking back now, I say to myself: What was I thinking? Why did I risk everything -- my friendship with Stevo, my career, my reputation, my family at the Kangaroos to have this brief affair that was always going to end in tears?

I had been in similar situations at the club before and always said no. I knew that was one no-go area: you didn't do the dirty on mates like that.

Sally and I were in the process of moving apartments in January and one day Kelli came over when Sally wasn't there. That was the first time we kissed. It was only brief. But straight away I thought to myself, "F---, what the hell have I done?"

We both knew that it was wrong. She knew and I knew, because we had talked about the ramifications.

Despite all of that, within a couple of weeks we ended up sleeping together. In the new apartment owned by Sally and me.

Now the die was cast. We knew we were entering very dangerous territory, but some strange force -- lust, danger, intrigue, physical attraction, I'm not sure -- prevented us from saying then and there: stop, this is totally ridiculous.

Over the next month we found ways to see each other and continue down this perilous path. We convinced each other, I suppose, that we were just having fun and nothing else mattered.

Clearly I wasn't thinking straight. We both understood the risks we were taking in behaving in this most selfish and irresponsible way, yet we continued to tempt fate.

Recounting that episode now, I feel ashamed at my stupidity and filled with regret.

After the fourth or fifth of these meetings, I came to my senses and told Kelli I wanted this to stop. I said it was ridiculous to think we could continue like this, and it was only going to cause a lot of grief for a lot of people.

This was in the last week or so of February.

I said, "You're not leaving Stevo, he loves you. And I'm not leaving Sally because I love her. So this has just got to stop."

I thought that if we ended it then and there, we could simply pretend it had never happened and get back on with our lives.

I'd betrayed Sally and Stevo, one of my best mates, but if no one ever found out then somehow it would all still be OK.

But I wasn't taking into account Kelli's feelings, and the fact that she might not want to walk away from it as casually as I felt I could. Once again, I was seeing things only from my own selfish perspective.

In the following week Kelli and I had several more frantic conversations. I told her again: "I love Sally and I'm not leaving her. You are staying with Stevo; he loves you."

We had agreed on that, and she seemed to accept that.

AS pathetic as this might sound, and as sad as it sounds to me now, I loved Sally. I know I have done the wrong thing by her but my stupidity was not motivated by a love for anyone else.

(A few weeks later) Sally and I drove out to Arch's (Glenn Archer's) place at Warrandyte. Everyone was there to celebrate his wife Lisa's 30th, including Stevo and Kelli.

It was a beautiful hot day. Everyone seemed happy. I was standing on the tennis court, knocking back a few beers with my teammates.

Later, around six or seven o'clock, when it was getting towards dusk, all the drinking had taken its toll and I needed to go to the bathroom.

The toilet at Arch's was just inside the back door. Pretty much everyone at the party would have had a view of it because you walked into it from an outside courtyard where people were standing under a gazebo, drinking. There might have been 120 people there in total.

I walked through the crowd to this bathroom. I closed the door behind me without locking it and went about my business. There was only a toilet and a basin in the room, with a small set of windows.

Halfway through, the door opened and Kelli walked in. Just like that.

She closed the door behind her. I couldn't believe what I was seeing. I said: "What the f--- are you doing?"

Everyone was outside and had seen me go in, and presumably they had all seen Kelli walk in after me. I began to panic. I said again, this time more forcefully: "What the f--- do you think you're doing?" I told her to get the hell out.

She kept saying, no, no, we need to talk. She was in there for maybe a minute, no more.

I was thinking, "F---, how am I going to get myself out of here?" I was looking at the windows. They were small but I figured if I could dive through one of them and just keep running then maybe I could run away from this whole terrible scene.

I said to Kelli: "You're a bloody idiot, why would you do this? Just go out the way you came in. Just get the hell out."

After a couple of minutes, she left. I shut the door again, locked it, stood there, looked in the mirror and thought, f------ hell, how am I going to get out of this? I felt sick.

I couldn't believe she'd do that. Walk into a bathroom after me in front of 20 or 30 people. Was she completely mad? Didn't she understand what she'd just done? It was only when I reflected on it later that I thought maybe she wanted people to know about us.

I DECIDED there was nothing to do other than go out and face the music. So I unlocked the door and walked out, as innocently as I possibly could. I walked back to where I had been standing and picked up my beer. As I started drinking it, I thought: "Bloody hell, maybe no one saw what happened." For a brief moment, I felt relief.

Then Arch walked up with a grim look on his face and said: "Duck, what the hell's going on? Something's happened, come with me."

So I followed him as he took me down to the garage where Stevo and Kelli were having an argument. I could see Stevo was furious. He'd seen his wife follow me into the toilet and that, I guess, had confirmed all his worst fears and suspicions. When he saw me he said: "What the f--- do you think you're doing?"

Then Sally rushed down from the party and wanted to know what had happened. I tried to explain but she burst into tears. She said she knew this was happening all along, she could tell something wasn't right.

The party started to degenerate into pandemonium: Sally was crying, Kelli was crying, Stevo was upset, there was shouting and tears.

I was denying everything. I'd always been told and taught to deny, deny, deny, unless you have been caught red-handed. And even if you have been caught red-handed you still deny, deny, deny.

But, deep down, I guess I knew this was the beginning of the end.

I'm not blaming anyone other than myself. Nor do I expect any sympathy, but everything that happened in my life afterwards stemmed from that stupid and selfish mistake I made with Kelli.

On Wednesday, March 13, 2002 I left the Kangaroos. I knew I had to leave the club. It seemed the only reasonable thing to do, but I've never, ever coped with that loss.

For a long time, my state of mind was shot. I destroyed my relationship with my wife, I lost my career, I lost most of my friends and I lost my dignity. I also lost my family at North Melbourne, which had become the family I never had as a child.

That's a lot to lose in one day, and it's taken me eight years to come to terms with it.

THE TRUTH HURTS by Wayne Carey, published by Macmillan Australia, RRP $34.99. On sale Tuesday.