Deadline: Troubled AFL star winning few friends with gangster routine

This troubled AFL star doesn’t seem to respond well to feedback on field, warning rivals who sledge him that he’s going to shoot them.

The footballer’s gangster routine would make Jules from Pulp Fiction proud.

Mark Buttler and Andrew Rule with the latest scallywag scuttlebutt.

Gun player shoots from the lip

A troubled footy star whose career isn’t going as planned would be better off looking for the Sherrin instead of trouble.

If rivals start gobbing off, it might be best for him to learn the value of turning the other cheek — as opposed to his present approach of telling them he’s going to shoot them.

This gangsta routine is more evidence that our AFL hero’s skinny possession stats are considerably higher than his IQ.

This is not the 1950s, when hard men who’d graduated from the inner suburbs and bush competitions used to play in the big league as “enforcers.”

One such was “Delicate Des” Dickson, the sometime Hawthorn ruckman (originally from Stawell) with a reputation not only for maiming opposition players but mauling his own teammates in practice games.

Another hard case of a different sort was Alberto (surname deleted), who raised the eyebrows of fellow Shinboners when a pistol fell out of his pants pocket in the change rooms after training.

The likes of Des and Alberto wouldn’t have put up with any trash talk from the nightclub hero.

The struggling star would be well advised to focus on the Sherrin.

Bad dad got sad and went mad

A young dad faced Melbourne Magistrates Court last month for drunkenly smashing up cars on a suburban street.

The magistrate asked what the hell he was doing “kicking car doors in” during the early hours of the morning in July 2022 while his kids slept at home.

“You portray yourself as a family man with three children but you’re out at 10 past 12 in the morning being violent,” the magistrate said of the $1133 damage the accused did to a stranger’s car.

The idiot’s lawyer told the court his client had been going through a difficult time after losing his job in Covid.

“Sometimes you’ve got to let loose, that’s all I can say,” concluded the lawyer gamely, or perhaps lamely.

Sort of the vibe of the thing, as the legendary Dennis Denuto put it in The Castle.

Yellow tales about Griffith family

Last week’s item from Griffith mafia-watcher Terry Jones suggesting the Sergi family wineries have hit a hurdle has stirred up the interesting history of well-known Sergi associates, the Casellas, the family behind the Yellow Tail plonk juggernaut.

Yellow Tail has been hailed the greatest export success story since merino wool, Williams boots and Akubra hats. Which goes to show that even bad publicity is better than none because when you’re hot you’re hot.

Back in 2014, one of the three Casella brothers who put Yellow Tail wines in the world’s supermarkets woke up with a severe hangover. That would be the morning after police raided various premises around Griffith and elsewhere to collect evidence of a huge drug syndicate against several connected men, including one Pasquale Sergi, 49 at the time.

Marcello Casella, youngest of the brothers, was alleged to be part of the criminal syndicate that produced and sold commercial quantities of cannabis and methamphetamine across the wide brown land.

Marcello Casella outside the Court of Criminal Appeal in Sydney. Picture: Jeremy Piper

The then 54-year-old appeared in Griffith Local Court charged with cultivating a large commercial quantity of a prohibited plant and taking part in a criminal group in connection with $15m of illicit drugs.

The youngest Casella brother’s problems didn’t exactly come out of a clear blue Murrumbidgee sky. They had begun when police raided a property linked to him at Yenda outside Griffith in February that year, leading him to be charged over the improper storage of two pallets of shotgun cartridges and 60kg of gunpowder.

Two weeks after the gunpowder drama, Marcello suddenly handed in his papers as director of Casella Wines, leaving his two older brothers, Joe and John, as the joint directors of the business by then exporting some 12 million cases of wine to more than 50 countries.

Marcello’s resignation proves that the Casellas must be clairvoyant — or have very good leaks in police and political circles — because seven months later he was charged with the serious drug offences referred to. Which would naturally be a legal headache for a noted wine export company.

Marcello stood down, leaving brothers, Joe and John, as the joint directors of Casella Wines. Picture: Dylan Robinson

For those wondering why the youngest Casella would have pallets of shotgun cartridges and industrial amounts of gunpowder, the answer is simple: not only was he a state champion clay target shooter, he started one of only two ammunition factories in Australia. That’s the entrepreneurial spirit for you.

Drawing any connection between that sporting trivia and the mafia’s traditional use of shotguns to deal with enemies would be ridiculous and hurtful and a blatant example of ethnic profiling.

Still, folks around Griffith sometimes wonder silently exactly how Marcello’s granddad, Filippo Casella, was able to start what became a global business from a tin shed on a 39ha irrigation block.

Probably just a case of hard work and good luck. And those excellent cannabis seeds he got from a helpful countryman who later tried to sting him for $5m.

As the song says, from little things big things grow.

Road worrier

One western suburbs motorist will be sure to be wary of driving anywhere near a service station attendant who dealt with him last week.

The charming fellow behind the jump had accepted payment as usual. But as the customer made his way back to his car he heard a call of “Excuse me, mate,” uttered in a strong sub-continental accent.

Mistakenly thinking it would be some kind of up-sell on Chokito bars, the customer was surprised when the friendly attendant waved a mobile phone under his nose.

The phone was displaying a tricky multiple choice question on how best to drive across town without having a prang.

It soon became apparent that this was a VicRoads hazard awareness questionnaire, designed to weed out those who aren’t quite ready to be issued with a driver’s licence.

The polite attendant wanted to know which of the alternatives he should click to move one step closer to hitting the road (if not a pedestrian at a zebra crossing).

In the learner driver’s defence, our spy actually didn’t know which answer was the right one, either. A case of the blind leading the blind.

Kids negative about school

Teenagers trying to avoid school have always been an inventive lot and their latest trick involves Covid home-testing kits.

It’s unclear whether they’re doing anything illegal but Deadline has been told the simple technique is spreading faster than the virus itself.

Probably best not to outline how they are beating the system because it could lead to even more of them hitting the couch instead of the books.

One eastern suburbs father tells us the scam is in widespread use because it meets with quite some success.

Your shout, Qantas!

In the unlikely event this column ran a customer service award, this week’s would go to Lisa from the Qantas desk at Port Lincoln Airport.

Deadline had spent some time on a fact-finding mission on the Eyre Peninsula region of South Australia with certain known associates when serious obstacles emerged on the way back home.

The fact is, Lisa deserves much huge credit for making a difficult situation as painless as possible by going the extra yard to ensure a return to Melbourne in the air, as opposed to hitchhiking.

It should be noted that she refused the offer of a small cash reward to buy a drink after doing some outstanding work on Deadline’s behalf.

So, the best we can do is let Qantas bosses know of her impeccable performance and let them shout her a good bottle of something. The flying leprechaun Alan Joyce wouldn’t mind it coming out of his $20m bonus. Or perhaps he would.