Jason Akermanis opens up about the biggest moments that saw him sacked from two AFL clubs
Jason Akermanis is one of football’s most controversial showmen and was unceremoniously sacked by not one but two clubs. Now he lifts the lid on his explosive exits from Brisbane and the Bulldogs.
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It was the ticking time bomb that was always going to detonate Jason Akermanis’ career with the Brisbane Lions at some stage.
That the complex relationship between the club and its most controversial showman survived for as long as it did – a dozen seasons, three flags and an extraordinary highlights package followed by a spectacular split – remains one of football’s great miracles.
On more than one occasion, Akermanis’ mouth, unfiltered honesty and edgy newspaper columns placed him at odds with his straight-down-the-line coach Leigh Matthews and some of his teammates.
He was only saved from the sack after producing a stunning five-goal performance in the 2003 Grand Final – helping to secure a three-peat for the Lions – after revealing pre-game that Nigel Lappin had a serious rib injury.
His coach was “filthy” with him, but his performance “absolutely” saved his bacon.
He wasn’t going to be so lucky next time.
That came in 2006, when the Lions’ golden era had faded, leaving Matthews and the club under pressure.
Just six months after winning a second club best and fairest, Akermanis pulled the pin on the grenade.
In a column written for Queensland’s Courier Mail newspaper, he gave his coach a none-too-subtle whack for daring to question his performance in the Round 1 clash with Geelong when he was tagged by three players.
“It was my first column with a new ghost writer, a guy named Andrew Hamilton, and he did say ‘Are you sure about this?’ I was like ‘Yeah, he will take it well’.
“I was wrong. I was so wrong.”
Matthews was livid.
Akermanis would be dropped in Round 7 after telling the Herald Sun his chances of staying at the Lions were “less than five per cent … (because) I felt like I wasn’t wanted.”
The schism with Matthews escalated in a heated meeting at the club.
“I got called in and there was an exchange of words,” Akermanis recalled. “I am saying ‘Mate, I am being honest with you’.”
“He has done the old ... ‘When are you going to stop sh***ing in my face?’ In the end, we have this argument. I am crying because I am a baby. That’s what happens when he is just giving it to you.”
Akermanis claimed Matthews started to get the other players against him.
The only support Akermanis gained was from club psychologist Phil Jauncey, who approached Matthews to say: “I don’t see the guy you see … I see a guy who is remorseful, who knows he has done the wrong thing.”
Fourteen years on, Akermanis disputes an assertion a unanimous player vote brought about his undoing. He claims some teammates have told him that wasn’t true.
He remains convinced it was the coach’s doing, even if he concedes he lit the fuse.
“From a psychological point of view, I (was) telling Leigh, come on, step up your game, stop bloody going to do breakfasts, lunches, dinners and making lots of money. Get back to the job’,” he said.
“My honesty killed me in the end … in the end, it was an easy decision. I was gone.”
TELL AKER TO GET TO THE FRONT
It was one of the most influential coaching messages of the modern era, but Akermanis knew it was coming long before runner Craig Starcevich ran towards him carrying Matthews’ instructions.
Moments before the defining passage of a classic 2002 Grand Final against Collingwood, Matthews was recorded on Fox Footy’s ‘From the lips of Lethal’ documentary telling the bench: “Tell Aker to get to the front.”
It’s something Akermanis had been telling himself moments earlier.
“It was wet and skidding … but the boys really started to adapt,” he said.
“(Late in the game) Lynchy (Alastair Lynch) went for a mark. I had gone to the back and it (the ball) has gone to the front.
“My mind was already like ‘Go to the front’. (Starcevich) didn’t have to even say it. I was like: ‘Yeah, yeah, yeah, go to the front’ because I could see he was running out to me.”
Just seconds after Channel 10’s five-minute-warning, with the Lions clinging on to a three-point lead, Brad Scott booted the ball forward.
Akermanis recounted: “(Shane) Wakelin and Lynchy are in another of their arm-wrestle love-ins. It comes to the front and Paul Licuria gets sucked underneath and Lynchy says ‘Aker, you are free’.
“(They were) the greatest words I’ve ever heard because I knew I had enough time, so I picked it up.
“My right adductor was half torn off the bone, so I couldn’t even kick right-footed, so at least I had my left foot. It goes though, we win the game and the rest is history.”
He tore his right adductor in one of the early passages of play when Ben Johnson “pushed me right in the middle of the back.”
“They are tendons so you can’t get injections into them. It was so painful.”
Akermanis still blames the AFL for costing the Lions what could have been a record-equalling fourth successive premiership in 2004.
The AFL thrust the Lions into a Saturday night MCG preliminary final instead of a Gabba contest.
The league cited an MCG contract that it quickly scrapped after the 2004 season, with a banged-up and tired Brisbane succumbing to Port Adelaide in the Grand Final with a day less break.
“The AFL cost us the fourth Grand Final,” he said.
“You never see Leigh Matthews upset these days. He is a mild-mannered relaxed man, but you just mention Andrew Demetriou in 2004 and you will see a man change like that into a filthy animal, and so he should be, and so are we as players, because that was an orchestrated hit against the club.”
For the record, the AFL has long rejected claims they deliberately tried to thwart the Lions’ record bid, saying they were hamstrung by a contractual deal.
LIFE AND STRIFE AT THE DOGS
For the first three seasons, 69 games and 112 goals, Akermanis’ trade to the Bulldogs looked the perfect marriage.
He played in two preliminary finals in 2008 and 2009 and the prospect of a fourth premiership medal loomed as a possibility.
Enter Barry Hall, in 2010, followed by a split every bit as bitter as it had been with the Lions four years earlier.
Hall essentially took over Akermanis’ go-to role in the forward line.
Then Akermanis fell out of favour with coach Rodney Eade and a group of senior Bulldogs he calls “the A Team”, who he claims worked against him.
He also took exception to the club’s reliance on Leading Teams and what he calls its “pop psychology”.
Akermanis was accused of leaking details about the club – a charge he denies.
By that stage, the club had banned his trademark handstand.
“They were like ‘it’s too individual, we don’t want individuality here’ … d***heads.
“It was a huge collective of very, very weak individuals allowed to get away with it.
“When you are 30 and you are the only one in the room who has had unbelievable success – three flags and a Brownlow – you know what you are talking about.
“(But) these blokes honestly thought they knew everything … I would suggest stuff and in the end I was getting stopped from the top. Rodney Eade did not want me undermining his stuff.”
In the Leading Teams assessments, Akermanis was told he “looked content”.
“That is the greatest load of crap,” he recalled.
“We called (some of the players) ‘the A team’, five or six of them who I had been warned about.
“They were more powerful than I ever thought.”
The Bulldogs captain at the time was Brad Johnson, and the senior group included experienced players such as Bob Murphy, Luke Darcy, Daniel Giansiracusa and Ben Hudson.
A contentious Herald Sun column centred on whether a homosexual AFL footballer would be willing to “come out” provided the grenade that helped end his time at the Bulldogs.
“What I believe happened was a couple of players said ‘I am not going to play with him’ and then Rodney put a line through you and you’re gone,” he said.
Akermanis was called into a meeting with Eade, president David Smorgon, chief executive Simon Garlick and footy boss James Fantasia and told he had been sacked.
“(Fantasia) was the only guy who came around afterwards (when) I was crying in the locker … my career is over and he’s patting me on the back, saying ‘Are you OK?’.
“I had the A Team against me … they’re still against me working for different things … Triple M and all that … who are still upset with me.
“It’s like they can’t get over it.”
THE OUTSIDER
Akermanis doesn’t apologise for being a complex person.
He possesses one of the best football CVs of the modern era but what he sees as the slights against him gnaw away at the 43-year-old a decade after leaving the AFL.
His local school in Brisbane – where he was still attending when he played his first game for the Lions in 1995 – hasn’t bothered to have his name inked on the honour boards.
He wonders if his actions cost him selection in All-Australian teams as a former selector once told him.
He has gone for countless jobs at AFL level in the years since his 2010 sacking from the Bulldogs, but has constantly been rejected for what he sees as inferior candidates.
“In the last 10 years, I’ve been for jobs and got laughed out of the place,” he said.
“It’s a tough pill to swallow.”
Akermanis said if he had been a Dennis Rodman-type maverick in the US he would be making millions. Instead, he figures his combative ways may have cost him around $2 million.
“In America, they celebrate the individual … whereas here it is not quite like that,” he said.
“Being good or famous or outspoken is like (being) the antichrist for (some) Australians.”
Akermanis was sacked twice in a football sense, but says he couldn’t help rock the boat when it needed rocking.
“This is the perfect show for me (Sacked) … how to live on after being sacked from every idiot in the world,” he joked.
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“You have to stand up for yourself. You have to stand up to groups and what do groups do, they gang up (on you) and you have no chance.
“I don’t like bullying. I go a bit nuts when I start to get bullied.”
He feels “ostracised” by the AFL world, despite all the entertainment and energy he provided over 16 seasons.
He desperately wants to coach and make a difference for young players in the AFL system, but knows it is unlikely to happen based on the evidence of the past decade.
“I am ready to step up, (but) I can see it’s not going to happen anytime soon,” he said.
But he insists he won’t give up on his dream as he works against the prejudices he says many in the game still hold against him.
