Daniel Chick breaks silence about drug culture at West Coast Eagles

WHEN the Eagles and Hawks take to the field this Saturday there’ll be one spectator in the stands who knows all too well the price some players are willing to pay for premiership glory.

Australian Press Council

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WHEN the Eagles and Hawks take to the field this Saturday there’ll be one spectator in the grandstands who knows all too well the price some players are willing to pay for premiership glory.

That spectator, Daniel Chick, also knows what it takes to win.

It was Chick’s spectacular smother, shepherd and handball to teammate Adam Hunter that set up the goal that secured the Eagles a one-point win in the 2006 premiership.

He made it look easy.

In reality, Chick’s journey to that breathtaking victory was anything but.

Whingeing doesn’t come naturally to Chick.

EAGLES TOXIC DRUG CULTURE REVEALED

He prefers to get on with the job rather than bellyache about what might have been.

When a persistent finger injury was giving him trouble in 2002, he opted to amputate the troublesome digit and play on.

Daniel Chick and Adam Hunter celebrate the pivotal goal. Picture: Stuart McEvoy

Chick celebrates the 2006 flag triumph with West Coast fans at the MCG.

Still, there’s no denying that Chick feels used and abused by the game he loved.

He feels especially cheated by West Coast, the club for which he sacrificed his health.

“I’d give up my premiership medallion for another 100 games with the Hawks because of the way I’ve been treated,” Chick says.

“It’s not a football club, West Coast, it’s a business and they didn’t care about the players.

“I went from the family club to the freakin’ playboy club and it ruined my life.”

There was no grand final lap of honour or testimonial dinners when the former Hawthorn best and fairest player retired in 2007 after 252 games.

Chick ended his career with a broken body, a wounded soul and his reputation in tatters but things were only going to get worse for the boy from Northampton.

A lot worse.

Descent into deep depression accompanied his journey from idol to infamy.

The fall from grace saw Chick’s physical and mental health deteriorate to a point where he was close to death and contemplating whether life was worth living.

“It was a horror time, I almost gave up a few times,” Chick said.

“I’ve made mistakes, I’ve been to hell and back but I’m clean, I’ve got my daughter back in my life and an amazing woman by my side.”

A BIG time gangster leaned over the table and stared.

“You’re not going write a book, are you, Chicky?”

The infamous underworld figure spoke like it was a question, but coming from him, Chick knew it was an order.

This man, one of the most active and connected organised crime figures in Australia, has evaded the law for decades.

He knows how to keep people quiet.

“He just appeared at a coffee shop,” Chick said.

“It’s what they do, they just appear and make their stance and let you know that they know what is going on.”

He never did write a book.

Chick and Cousins as teammates celebrate the 2006 Grand Final win.

And playing against each other when Chick was with Hawthorn. Picture: Ian Cugley

Chick acknowledges that he is no saint — though he almost became one, if not for an infamous incident involving a dozen police cars, a lipstick case filled with Valium and a shirtless Ben Cousins arrested in the full glare of TV cameras.

“Michael Gardiner had called me the day before and told me that Ross Lyon had said to tell Chicky to just lay low, don’t get into any trouble and we’ll pick you up in the pre-season draft to replace Aaron Hamill,” Chick said.

“I was the happiest I’ve been for a while and the next day it was all gone.”

Chick was never charged over that incident but in 2010 he was apprehended at Perth Airport with vials of steroids and later fined $7000.

“The steroids were for me,” Chick admits.

“That was me thinking I’ll save some money, they are cheaper over here.

“I was self-medicating trying to find something to feel better and experimented with performance enhancing things I brought over the counter at chemists in Thailand.”

The 39-year-old father of two acknowledges he has made many mistakes but he doesn’t believe that should absolve powerful men in positions of influence from their culpability in West Coast’s drug saga.

A saga that ran far deeper than recreational drug use among a select band of players.

“Look at Essendon, the first people to go were the CEO and president,” he said.

“At West Coast all the main figures got cemented in there.”

Drugs like Xanax, Valium, Stilnox and temazepam were routinely abused by players, Chick claims.

THE drug culture at the club included not only widespread illicit drug abuse but also the use and misuse of prescription medicine sometimes paid for by the club.

Drugs like Xanax, Valium, Stilnox and temazepam were routinely abused by players.

For a more potent effect powerful prescription drugs were crushed and snorted with vodka chasers.

“Athletes abuse anything they can get their hands on as long as it’s within the rules,” Chick said.

“Pharmaceutical drugs, downers and sleeping pills were a lot more prevalent at West Coast ... it was easy to get hold of pharmaceutical scripts.

“At the Hawks you couldn’t even get Panadine Forte, you’d have to go to a 24-hour chemist after the game and pay for it yourself.”

Chick claims West Coast even paid for drugs like Valium and Xanax. Several players would hand their prescriptions to a club staffer, who’d collect them, he says.

Two years ago when he was ready to get clean Chick headed to Thailand for treatment.

He had little choice. It was that or death.

And swanky LA rehab facilities were out of his reach.

The cheap Thai alternative saved his life, and his sanity.

“It’s clear now looking back that I was self-medicating for depression over my marital split and my brother’s death,” Chick said.

In the quieter moments he often ponders what may have been if he’d never left the Hawks to return to his home state of WA to be closer to family who were mourning the loss of a son, Daniel’s brother, Justin who died suddenly from an allergic reaction.

At Hawthorn, where he played 149 games from 1996, Chick was seen as a natural leader; tough, honest and incapable of giving anything less than 100 per cent.

Had he stayed at Hawthorn he was every chance of being a future captain.

He was certainly among the favourite players of the club’s much respected president.

Ian Dicker adored the surfer dude with the blonde mop and his young family.

“Dicko offered to send a farm manager to the farm and to put my parents up in Melbourne, and a full-time nanny to help my wife Kimberly with our son Sethy,” Chick said.

“Jobs, careers in whatever field ... that was all stuff he threw at me after I had decided to go and I was amazed.

“I wanted to stay after I realised how much he cared.”

CHICK’S glamorous American wife also tried her best to keep him in Melbourne.

“My wife didn’t want to go to the Eagles, she knew what Cuzzy’s (Ben Cousins’s) reputation was like and she was wary. But I wanted to play in Western Australia,” he said.

The marriage ended with an acrimonious divorce, but Chick is determined to repair the damage for the sake of their son, Seth.

Losing his marriage and son, when Kimberly moved back to the US, was a bitter blow for Chick that still stings today.

He hasn’t seen Seth in years.

When he’s been at his worst mentally, he’s had what he calls the ‘vultures of the media’ at his door offering him fat pay days to spill his guts on camera.

Struggling finnancialy he came close to accepting more than once.

But he has spoken to the Herald Sun for no payment, because he doesn’t want other players to endure what he has.

He believes that players’ wellbeing should supersede all other considerations, including premierships and clubs’ reputations.

When, in August 2007, he suffered a brutal blow to the throat, courtesy of a Dean Solomon elbow, he believes West Coast risked his long-term health by ignoring his pleas for help.

Chick and the new woman in his life, Jodee.

“I went to the club doctors and said I can’t play this week, there’s something wrong with me, I’m a nervous wreck, I think I’ve got anxiety and they laughed at me,” Chick said.

“I said I’m struggling, my brother died of anaphylactic shock from his throat closing up, I don’t know if it was the nightmares of that or the incident.

“I remember when I got hit out on the ground I thought straight away ‘shit, I’m going to die’.”

Chick is a survivor. He got clean. And he’s determined to get healthy both in mind and body.

Jodee, the new woman in his life, is his ``angel’’.

And little Oceanna is the apple of her father’s eye.

He’s suffered more blows than most, lots of them self-inflicted, but Chick has plenty to fight for as he enters the next chapter of his life.