Stewart Crameri opens up on how the Essendon supplements saga impacted his life

Grand final day in 2016 was a fairytale for most Western Bulldogs, but for Stewart Crameri the Essendon drugs saga still wasn’t over. He tells his story to Sam Landsberger.

What was the toughest moment of Stewart Crameri’s career?

“Getting told you’re a drug cheat is the first one,” Crameri told the Herald Sun.

“And then not being able to play a grand final is the second, definitely.”

That grand final was in 2016. Crameri shed a tear watching from his Windsor home as his Western Bulldogs won a fairytale flag.

It was a wild week. Crameri got married the night before the game and had trained in front of 10,000 supporters at Whitten Oval a day before that.

But the goalkicker had been kicked out of the 2016 season for partaking in Essendon’s 2012 supplements program. He was banned from attending the MCG on grand final day.

Former Essendon captain Jobe Watson was stripped of the 2012 Brownlow Medal. But the drugs saga cost Crameri a premiership – and no player would swap team success for individual glory.

“I do feel sorry for Jobe, though,” Crameri said.

“He was such a great captain and to get that taken off him was highly unfair. I think he was well-deserved that year. He absolutely smashed it.”

What about 2016?

“Disappointing I couldn’t play, I definitely would’ve been in that team,” Crameri said.

“Bob Murphy – he’d been there for 17 years and missed out – so there’s always someone worse off.

“But, geez, I would’ve liked to have played that game.”

Crameri and former Essendon coach James Hird in 2013.

THE TANK

Crameri finally chalked up 100 AFL games at his third club, Geelong, in 2018. Later that season he spent a month legally blind courtesy of a whack in a VFL game that tore the back of his retina.

He was relieved to be delisted. These days the 34-year-old has four kids under six in Ballarat and runs two ‘Crameri’s Mitre 10’ hardware stores.

But to understand Crameri’s rocky road from Maryborough to the MCG – via that damned drugs regimen – you have to go all the way back to the beginning.

As an eight-year-old he was nicknamed ‘The Tank’ and played in his brother’s under-13s team.

“I used to kick more goals than everyone when I was eight or nine and they were all 12,” he said.

But Crameri – cut from the TAC Cup as his interest waned – walked the long and windy road to the AFL, where Windy Hill long loomed as his destination.

After a three-year apprenticeship at Essendon’s VFL affiliate Bendigo Bombers from 2007-09 he was in. He thought it would be two years.

“I was (at Essendon) for two or three months, did everything I was asked, and because at that stage not many clubs had actually drafted from the VFL they were pretty reluctant to do it,” Crameri said.

“Even though I’d trained hard. So I was really disappointed at the end of (2008).”

HOSTEL LIVING

In 2009 Crameri quit his job and paid $40 a night to stay at a North Melbourne hostel. Constant travel was tarnishing his VFL training and so he based himself closer to Windy Hill.

“Top bunk, bottom bunk and then a communal thing down the bottom,” Crameri said of the hostel.

“It wasn’t much. The beds were terrible … (but) I had to do whatever I could to be in Melbourne. I was doing boxing at Keilor three times a week and training three times a week.

“I didn’t work for that last six months before I got drafted. Dad was obviously the (hardware store) owner. He said, ‘Oh, well, you just gotta go’. I was at that stage where nothing was really going to stop me.”

ANZAC DAY ARRIVAL

Crameri made his mark at Essendon long before rogue sports scientist Stephen Dank infected the club.

It was Anzac Day 2011. He was the Bombers’ best player against the reigning premiers, booting four goals in just his eighth match.

It was Crameri’s second game against Collingwood. But the previous year he had lined up on Scott Pendlebury, Dale Thomas and Dane Swan as a midfielder in his AFL debut.

Then, the Bombers sacked coach Matthew Knights and installed their dream team of James Hird, Mark Thompson and forwards coach Brendan McCartney, who took Crameri under his wing.

“It was pretty much the start of my new life,” Crameri said of his breakout performance on Anzac Day.

“Once I’d played that game everyone said, ‘He’s here as a footballer’ and everyone sort of knew who I was.”

Then, 2012 rolled around and life would never be the same.

Crameri initially played midfield for the Bombers before being moved forward.

‘YOU JUST GO ALONG WITH IT

Crameri said he was injected at a “couple of external places” – but mainly at the club before or after training. He was hardly going to refuse them.

“They just said they were going to introduce a new supplement program and it’s going to help our team performance,” he said.

“Look, I was 23 at the time so any little edges you can get is great. You don’t really question what your fitness coach or dietitian tells you at a football club.

“You just go along with it. At that stage it was really good – everyone was training well, playing well and everything.

“It’s just unfortunate for all those young kids and myself to go through all that crap. It wasn’t nice and people are still angry about it.

“I say, ‘Well, you didn’t have to go through it’. It’s traumatic, really, to have a young athlete go through that when they don’t do anything wrong and it’s someone else’s fault.”

Who’s angry?

“Supporters,” Crameri said.

“I don’t really want to speak about the Essendon Football Club the last decade, they haven’t done a lot, have they? I think they get frustrated from that point of view.

“They feel like it’s set them back a bit.”

Did the injections work?

“You couldn’t say it really improved us out of sight or anything like that,” Crameri said.

“You see an AFL club do a pre-season (and) you’ll see results, purely because of that.

“If people say, ‘Oh, you’ve had this and look how fit you guys look’ … you’re doing 13km three times a week, and then you go and lift maximal weights two and a half times a week.

“You’re gonna be looking like this. So it didn’t do a lot. “

Does Crameri know what they were given?

“I don’t know,” he said.

“They said a few names, not that I know what that are. They could’ve been anything.”

Crameri was 23 when the supplements program began. Pic: MICHAEL KLEIN.

CONSTANT TURMOIL

Crameri won Essendon’s goalkicking award for the third consecutive year in 2013 and then asked for a trade.

He wanted to reunite with McCartney at Whitten Oval and also wanted to escape the media spotlight after journalists and TV cameras camped outside most training sessions.

But McCartney was sacked by the Dogs one year into Crameri’s four-year contract.

He was in Thailand when told that the coach and captain (Ryan Griffen) were out the door.

“I’m starting to think that’s normal (losing a coach). I’ve seen it three times and I’ve only been in the system four or five years,” Crameri said.

In 2015 Crameri beat up on the Bombers, booting a career-best seven goals. Jake Carlisle was caught saying: “This club is f*****” as he came to the bench that game. Carlisle walked out two months later.

“I was lining up on Ariel Steinberg and Dyson Heppell and I could sense they felt defeated, or they looked defeated,” Crameri said.

“I felt sorry for them a little bit, but then again I was there to play a game of football. I always tried my best and had my kicking boot on that night.”

The Dogs won by 87 points. Hird resigned two weeks later after a 112-point belting.

Then, the WADA wipe-out came. On January 12 Crameri was one of 34 players told their 2016 season was over before it had begun.

THE GUT FEEL

Crameri took a mental health break from the Bulldogs before the bans landed. He sensed they were coming.

“Brent Prismall (Dogs welfare officer and former Bomber) and I used to lean on each other a fair bit at the Bulldogs because we were both in it together,” Crameri said.

“After a conversation we had … I thought, I reckon we’ll be banned. I didn’t say anything to anyone, and I actually had some time off from the club.

“I’m not that type of person to have time off. I’m usually there early doing everything. I actually sort of mourned a little bit in that December period, pre-empting what’s going to happen.

“When it happened I was in shock. I’d worked so hard to get to this position and now someone was telling me that I’m not allowed to come to training due to someone else’s bad management, essentially.”

Crameri digested the news upstairs at Whitten Oval with coach Luke Beveridge, then-president Peter Gordon and Prismall.

“I said, ‘Well, I’m just gonna go home then’,” Crameri said.

“They said ‘Yep, righto. Off you go’. Which was not a very good feeling.”

The forward played 42 games for the Bulldogs. Picture: Wayne Ludbey

BOMBER BEERS

Crameri crashed beers with the 12 banned Bombers that afternoon. They reminisced at David Myers’ house before talk turned to training.

“They were putting a program together and needed a bit of money and I think Cale Hooker suggested that I come and train with those guys,” Crameri said.

“They said, ‘He’s not on the team’ and Cale said, ‘But he’s going to help us train better, see it from that point of view’.

“I said, ‘Thanks, Cale’. That was the best thing I could have ever had in that 2016 period.”

As the Dogs plotted their path to a premiership, Crameri would go for a kick down the road at Keilor Grammar School.

“It wasn’t lifesaving, but it was so needed just to talk to those guys each day,” Crameri said.

“It was a bit of a mental health thing as well. How’s everyone going? Going OK? Or on the side you’re having a chat to Jobe … how’s things? How’s life? Yep, everyone’s good? Righto, check-in with everyone then let’s train for an hour or an hour of a half.”

WINTER DREAMS

The banned Bombers packed their bags for Croatia with Essendon bound for its first wooden spoon since 1933.

But Crameri kept training through Melbourne’s chilly winter after a brief visit to Las Vegas with his parents for a hardware convention.

“There was a chance I might actually come back and play, because they were trying to overturn it (the ban),” he said.

“So I was working closely with Bevo and a few of the guys … to keep fit. I was actually ready to go by August-September.

“I couldn’t go overseas again. If there was that one in a hundred chance it could get overturned I’d be playing finals.”

The ban was never lifted. But after eight months on the outer Crameri was allowed to train with his teammates again in September.

They got a surprise as they prepared to take on three-time reigning champs Hawthorn in a Friday night semi-final. Those in the room say the lights were turned off and the music turned on as Crameri charged through the side door like the Hulk.

“I guess they made me feel like a bit of a rock star, but that’s the culture they had at the Bulldogs,” Crameri said.

“They just made me feel so welcome like I hadn’t missed any time. So I really needed that, I was bloody nervous.”

The Dogs ended Hawthorn’s dynasty. Suddenly, Crameri was training at Whitten Oval in preliminary final week with his nuptials only one week away.

He watched the Dogs advance to their first grand final in 55 years at Chapel St’s The Union Hotel.

“I used to look at my missus and say, ‘Well, I’ll pack my bag again’. So I packed my bag ready for Monday,” he said.

“I’d been training, so I was 80-90 per cent there. But all of a sudden these guys are in a grand final and I’m thinking, ‘Geez, I gotta sharpen up here. I don’t want to be lagging’.

“I was at a Keilor ones stage, now I’ve turned up on Thursday two days before the grand final and there’s 10,000 people at Whitten Oval.

“We did a (wedding) recovery day and I put the TV out the back and everyone came to my place and we watched the grand final.

“I could just tell after halftime, I said the boys are gonna win.

“I shed a tear after with the family and I said, ‘That’s OK. At least I was a part of it somehow, I was at the club for the month’.”

‘THE END OF MY CAREER’

That premiership team was supposed to be strengthened by captain Bob Murphy, Travis Cloke, Mitch Wallis, Lin Jong, Jack Redpath and Crameri.

Instead the Bulldogs fell to bits in 2017. Crameri hurt his hip at the end of a January training session.

“I had to kick a ball about 60m,” he said.

“I essentially tore my labrum off, which is the tissue between the hip point and hip bone. That was essentially the end of my career.”

Crameri spent 4 ½ hours under the knife as surgeons discovered it was “bone on bone”. On the long and lonely road to recovery he became distant from the Dogs.

“It just sort of fizzled out,” he said.

Geelong recruiter Stephen Wells invited Crameri down for a medical and offered a lifeline as a rookie for 2018. Crameri said the Cats were a “great club” led by captain Joel Selwood.

“But I went into the meeting at the end of the year, and I was kind of hoping they would say, ‘Oh, we’re not going to offer you a contract’,” he said.

“I’d just had enough. Joel Selwood spoke about it at the end of his career, how he’s in pain and some days has to hobble to the bathroom.

Crameri played four games for the Cats. (Photo by Quinn Rooney/Getty Images)

“Some days are like that, and you think, ‘What am I doing to myself?’ (The torn retina) was probably a sign from God I needed to probably finish up. It was a pretty bad injury.

“You go well, hang on, this is just getting ridiculous. What am I doing? I’m killing myself. Times up.”

Crameri has had some larger-than-life coaches.

“Chris Scott was really relaxed, let the players drive the culture. Really easy coach to get along with,” he said.

“James Hird was determined. He just wanted to be the best, wanted the team to be the best – understandably exactly how he played.

“Luke Beveridge, he was very strategic in his gamestyle. Very smart and just understood players, understood football and had a really good knowledge of everything.”

What about Dank? What would Crameri say to Dank if he saw him tomorrow?

“I’m over it, I don’t care,” he said.

“I’m a big believer in moving on and having positive thoughts about things. I really don’t care anymore.”