Luke Darcy: Questioning lockdowns doesn’t mean you don’t care about elderly
He has accused Dan Andrews of “barbaric” lockdowns but former Bulldog Luke Darcy says questioning harsh restrictions doesn’t mean not caring about others.
News
Don't miss out on the headlines from News. Followed categories will be added to My News.
Luke Darcy was always a thinking man’s footballer.
Throughout his career he didn’t fit the conventional mould — he was articulate, intelligent and destined to succeed in business and life.
After the star Bulldogs ruckman retired, it didn’t take long for his profile to grow.
In 2009 he landed a plum gig on breakfast radio alongside Eddie McGuire – heading up Triple M’s Hot Breakfast.
A successful 11 years followed — they bid farewell in November — and it wasn’t until his final year on air, through a Covid pandemic and lengthy lockdown, that Darcy’s poise and smarts took a front seat.
He won widespread plaudits after going toe-to-toe with Premier Daniel Andrews and, among other things, questioning lockdown as the only choice for Victoria.
A family man and father of four, Darcy couldn’t hold back and spoke about his own painful experience, losing his beloved father, David, in August, 2020.
He vividly reflects on that and stands by his stance.
“It is an intense time and what’s happening in Melbourne is extraordinary,’’ Darcy said.
“There is a diverse range of opinions and I’m disappointed that a lot of that debate has gone. It’s a hard space to have a debate now. You are either for or against, you either hate or love someone. There’s no middle ground. I think what I loved about our show through that lockdown period was we were trying to find that middle ground.
“I wasn’t pretending to be an epidemiologist or a doctor or a political leader. But let’s ask questions and let’s get a range of people on. I think that’s gone and at the moment we’re still in a situation where our kids have pretty much missed out on two years of school.
“I think that needs a lot of debate: what could we possibly do to get our kids to school and kids playing sport?
“There are a couple of things to me that are non-negotiables and we should be finding a way. I don’t hear a lot of debate about that and it’s a shame.”
Darcy, his mum, Janet, and siblings, Matthew, Kim and Alysha, lost their husband and father, David, a former Western Bulldogs champion, at the age of 76.
The kids grew up in the South Australian desert town of Roxby Downs, where David and Janet ran a pub.
Darcy and his dad were extremely close — he followed in his football and hospitality footsteps — and he revealed isolation and loneliness had contributed to his father’s passing.
“It’s been a tough time for everyone who lost a loved one through this period, where you haven’t been able to essentially farewell them,’’ Darcy said.
‘The cost of what we’re doing at the moment is extreme’
“I wasn’t pretending to be unique in that or looking for sympathy. They are the questions we are asking: what is the cost of missing out on opportunities to be with your loved ones and to not have your kids at school for two years? And the cost of what we’re doing at the moment is extreme and it needs to thaw.
“I think there has been this throwaway line, ‘if you want to talk openly about alternatives you don’t care about older people’. That’s not a reasonable debate. How lucky was I to have a person in my life as brilliant as my dad. It’s almost 12 months to the day we lost him and I still think about him every day but I am very fortunate that, in the end, he was around his loved ones as well.
“You can talk openly about solutions and it doesn’t mean that you don’t care about the elderly people in your life. I’ve got four kids who are healthy and doing really well. But that’s a lot of time away for a generation of people in this state and it’s alarming and it’s concerning.
“All the lead indicators are concerning on youth mental health. The calls from kids to lifeline are off the charts. Every day we should be sitting there saying what are we doing in real time to help this generation.
“The stakes are pretty high at the moment, keeping people locked in their houses is a pretty challenging thing to do.”
‘Keeping people locked in their houses is a pretty challenging thing to do’
Darcy isn’t putting his hand up to become a law maker or changer, but he is putting up his hand to help educate, empower and grow future leaders and kids.
His new podcast, called Empowering Leaders with Luke Darcy, has started on LiSTNR and it’s part of a leadership program called Aleda that he is wholly passionate about.
It all started six years ago after his long-time friend Matt Wadewitz veered into a different field after injury cut short his promising footy career. The pair had grown up together, playing at South Adelaide in South Australia and then Wadewitz went down the path of nurturing and inspiring as a teacher, while Darcy forged a career with the Bulldogs.
Together they have reconnected and worked with the likes of Australian Boomers coach Brian Goorjian, Australian cricket coach Justin Langer, former Wallabies coach Eddie Jones and closer to home, Bulldogs president Kylie Watson-Wheeler and AFL coaches Damien Hardwick, Luke Beveridge, Don Pyke, John Worsfold and Ben Rutten.
“It’s really exciting the path we’re heading down and my passion is through the roof for it,’’ Darcy said.
“The way they are open and vulnerable and share and collaborate. It just creates a great space. You don’t have to be a CEO to be a leader. Even recording this podcast, I am amazed and I think the learnings are brilliant. Doing breakfast radio for 11 years was a pretty consuming thing to do and I had all these things I was interested in and chopped away at and I haven’t been able to devote the time to it. Now there’s no excuse.
“Matt has refined that and built it and I just became captivated by it. One of the things is you want your kids to be engaged and you want their teachers to be reflecting and learning. We put through over 1000 educators in South Australia and moved quickly into sport. The sporting guys are so self reflective and we work with some incredible sporting guys.”
Old habits do linger, though, and the alarm goes off at 5.30am each morning, an hour later than it used to.
That’s because Darcy is as busy as ever — being a dad, calling footy for Channel 7 and Triple M, working on the House of Wellness, looking after venues with the family under The Darcy Group and he also just had a stint co-hosting the daytime Olympics coverage with Johanna Griggs.
In his spare time he meditates.
He and Eddie McGuire bowed out of the airwaves on a high, which he is thankful for.
“It was a pretty consuming thing to do, a brilliant thing to do and I loved it,’’ Darcy said.
“I think, like anything, when that’s been your routine and your alarm goes off at 4.30 and you drive that same path and you get your coffee, roll in and say ‘hi’ to (panel operator) Rosie (Walton) and Ed rolls in. It was a pretty long time to do it and what a great experience. It was a bit of a relief, too, to be honest, at the end.
“To finish on a really good note and I think a really positive and successful note is a nice thing. I haven’t missed it at all. I can’t imagine doing it again but it was a great experience at the same time.
“That was the beauty of it, you can put a few people together in a radio studio and there’s no guarantee that A) you’re going to get on, or B) you’re going to have authentic interaction. I love that with Ed, we’re very different people clearly. You’re not trying hard enough if you haven’t got your own thoughts. The beauty of Ed is he loves that space and he’s never going to shy away himself from his thoughts and I’ve probably got a fair bit of that in me as well.
“We left with a bit more in the tank, and it’s always good to finish like you’re ready for the next part of your life.”
Darcy and McGuire still message and catch up, and generally do more when they’re both down the coast.
Darcy’s son, Sam, set for father-son recruit, continuing generations of Bulldogs’ players
“I love the messages I get. I still get sent articles, some opinion pieces that he’ll flick my way, which I enjoy. We have our debates via phone now rather than on air, which is good fun.”
Another exciting prospect for Darcy is that his son, Sam, may become a father-son recruit at the Bulldogs. He and wife Bec also have daughter Sienna, 16, who has played footy and is now into rowing and netball, while his other sons Will, 14 and Max, 10, are obsessed with all sports.
board member now at the Bulldogs after his 226-game career, it would be a special time for the family if another Darcy landed there.
“He’s a very passionate young lad, still very much a young boy doing year 12 in his mum’s eyes, and my eyes,’’ Darcy said.
“He might have had a bit of excess PR going on for a while, for a young kid who’s only played six or seven games in two years really.
“You’re lucky if your kid does something they love, and he’s pretty passionate, and if that opportunity comes for him in November, he’s going to be a pretty happy young lad. And we’re pretty happy to support him wherever that ends up.
“My dad started when he was 17 and I started at 17 and it was an emotional experience dropping him at the door (of Whitten Oval) at 17 thinking ‘that oval has been a big part of my family’s life for a long while now’. My grandma, Nana Darce, lived until she was 94 or 95 and she saw every game dad played and I played, and they would have loved to see Sam running around on that same ground.”
Empowering Leaders with Luke Darcy is available on LiSTNR, listnr.com and aledacollective.com
Fake dead paraded through Melb, prams draped in head scarfs
The prams of babies have been draped with head scarfs and fake stretchers for the dead carried through city streets as pro-Palestine supporters gathered on the anniversary of terror attacks.
‘Darkness in Australia’ as fears Albo has ‘let anti-Semitism fester’
One of Melbourne’s top Jewish leaders has slammed the Albanese government, telling a crowd gathered to mourn the October 7 Hamas attacks that the government had “abandoned” Israel.