From footballers behaving badly to athletes on drugs, these are the fallen stars of Australian sports
FOR every story of gutsy glory, Australian sport has just as many tattered tales of downfall from footballers behaving badly to athletes on drugs.
Sport
Don't miss out on the headlines from Sport. Followed categories will be added to My News.
FOR every story of gutsy glory, Australian sport has just as many tattered tales of downfall.
The arrest today of former swimming champion Grant Hackett is just one of literally hundreds of examples of athletes in trouble with the law.
From all codes of football to the pool, the athletics track to the velodrome, these are the fallen stars of sport.
BEN COUSINS
Once a grand final winning captain of the West Coast Eagles, Cousins descended into a life of drugs and mayhem. He fled the scene when he was pulled over at a breath test in Perth in 2006 and then resigned as captain.
Later that year he was arrested for public intoxication after passing out at the front of Crown Casino in Melbourne.
Cousins then tested positive for drugs in March 2007 and was suspended indefinitely from the club.
He was the subject of a documentary Such Is Life: The Troubled Times of Ben Cousins.
Cousins has had had multiple court appearances in recent years after police arrested him for numerous offences.
His latest arrest saw the star spend two nights in jail in December 2016 after he breached a domestic violence order brought by his former partner and the mother of his two children, Maylea Tinecheff.
GEOFF HUEGILL
He was the squeaky clean butterfly swimmer who made a successful comeback and carved a post-sports career with health and fit endorsements.
But his 2014 arrest for drug possession, alongside his publicist wife Sara Hill, threatened to destroy all of Huegill’s hard work.
Police caught the couple with cocaine in the bathroom of a private suite at Sydney’s Randwick racecourse. They were charged and later copped six-month good behaviour bonds.
NICK D’ARCY
Almost overnight, D’Arcy went from swimming pin-up to the pool’s most hated man after a sickening king hit attack on Simon Cowley in 2008.
The fellow swimmer suffered horrific injuries, including fractures to his jaw, eye socket, cheek bone and nose. D’Arcy was arrested, charged and later sentenced to 14 months and 12 days, suspended on the condition of good behaviour.
Three years later, Cowley was awarded $180,000 in damages.
DAWN FRASER
It was 1964 when swimming icon Fraser stole an Olympic flag during the Summer Olympics in Tokyo.
After a night of partying and celebrating her gold medal wins she went to Emperor Hirohito’s palace in Tokyo and took a flag to keep as a memento.
She was arrested but released without charge but the Australian Swimming Union suspended her for 10 years, effectively ending her swimming career.
ANDREW JOHNS
After being arrested at a London Underground train station for possessing an ecstasy tablet in 2007, NRL legend Johns was dropped by the Wallabies.
Then Johns admitted live on The Footy Show that he had regularly taken ecstasy throughout his career. It was then revealed his drug use was the reason his contract with the Knights wasn’t renewed in 2004.
TODD CARNEY
Troubled Cronulla bad boy Carney was first arrested in 2007 after he and teammate Steve Irwin led Canberra police on a car chase.
Carney abandoned the car and fled. He was charged with drink driving and reckless driving, failing to stop when directed by police, negligent driving and driving while disqualified.
He received a suspended jail sentence.
In 2014 the player was again making news for the wrong reasons when a photograph emerged of Carney in a Cronulla nightclub seemingly urinating into his own mouth.
MITCHELL PEARCE
A few years before he drunkenly simulated a sex act on a dog, Pearce was the subject of a police probe into a Kings Cross nightclub incident.
In 2014, Channel Nine broadcast footage of the rugby league star hassling a woman, who went to police but later withdrew her complaint.
However Pearce was issued an infringement notice for failing to leave the venue when asked. He was banned from the Sydney party precinct for 48 hours.
GREG BIRD
After glassing his girlfriend in 2008, the Cronulla Sharks player was found guilty and sentenced to 16 months’ jail.
Although the sentence was overturned after it was found the incident was an accident, it cost him his contract with the club.
In 2015 while playing for the Gold Coast Titans, Bird was implicated in an alleged drug ring and arrested, but the charges were later dropped.
LIAM JURRAH
The Melbourne Demons star raised eyebrows when he was charged for attacking his cousin with a machete in an Alice Springs town camp.
Liam Jurrah was eventually found not guilty, but has been hit with a number of legal problems since then.
He has served three jail sentences for being violent against women since he quit the club in 2012.
CHRIS JONGEWAARD
The champion cyclist was jailed for two years after he ran down his training partner and left the scene in 2009.
The star athlete, a four-time national cross-country mountain bike champion, was driving drunk on his way to get cigarettes.
After serving seven months behind bars Jongewaard’s exemplary prison behaviour secured him an early release on home detention.
NATHAN BAGGALEY
In his prime, Baggaley was a world-beating sprint kayaker. He competed in both the 2000 Sydney Olympics as well as the 2004 Athens Olympics where he took home two silver medals. He also won numerous world championships.
In 2001 Baggaley was announced as a finalist in the Cleo Bachelor of the year contest and in 2002 he was the runner-up to swimmer Ian Thorpe for the NSW Sports Institute’s top award, athlete of the year prize.
But then it all fell apart. In 2005 he tested positive to steroids and was banned for two years. Baggaley went off the rails in the drug scene.
In 2009, he and his brother Dru were jailed for their roles in an ecstasy ring around the Gold Coast and Byron Bay. He was then jailed again in December 2015 for a minimum two years and three months more drug offences.
SCOTT MILLER
Another star butterfly swimmer to experience trouble, Miller was found with a commercial pill press, drugs, a gun and $240,000 in cash during a raid by police in 2008.
The former husband of the late model Charlotte Dawson, Miller was sentenced to 100 hours of community work and a two-year good behaviour bond.
Again in 2013, a police search uncovered the drug methamphetamine and $17,000 and Miller copped a one-year suspended jail sentence.
SCOTT VOLKERS
Volkers rose to fame in the swimming world as the coach of Sam Riley and Susie O’Neill, both of whom were multiple Olympic medallists.
But the disgraced former coach was arrested in 2002 and committed to stand trial on seven charges of indecently dealing with a child under the age of 16.
Charges were eventually dropped after finding there was no reasonable basis for conviction, however Volkers was prohibited from working with children aged under 16.
In 2014, the Royal Commission Into Institutional Responses To Child Sex Abuse turned the spotlight back onto Volkers.
MATT LODGE
It was meant to be a relaxing off season trip to New York but NRL player Lodge ended up behind bars in October 2015 after a terrifying altercation in which he told two women “this is the night you die’’.
Lodge confronted the women as they stepped out of a cab then forced his way into their apartment building. When a neighbour intervened, he was attacked by Lodge who entered his home and tried to smash down a bathroom door where his wife and son were hiding.
He was charged with felony burglary causing injury, which carried a maximum 25 years in jail. He cut a deal with prosecutors and pleaded guilty to a misdemeanour count of reckless assault.
But this wasn’t Lodge’s first taste on the wrong side of the law. He was arrested at the start of 2015 in Kings Cross, and suspended for two matches after he wrote the word c--- on his wrist strapping during an under-20s Origin game for NSW.
Originally published as From footballers behaving badly to athletes on drugs, these are the fallen stars of Australian sports
Sydney Sweeney responds to flirty request
Hollywood superstar Sydney Sweeney has responded to a flirty request that went viral after appearing in the background of a live feed.
Internet loses it at host’s ‘insane’ meltdown
A barely-believable on-air outburst took the internet by storm with viewers stunned as to what was unfolding in front of their eyes.