Deadline: Visiting sport star’s brush with Melbourne’s underworld

If one big-name sportsman fails to make it back to play top level in Melbourne, at least he’ll have some memories of a night enjoying the high life with a major underworld player in our fair city.

One sports star enjoyed a night out in Melbourne with a major underworld player at the height of their fame.

Mark Buttler and Andrew Rule with their weekly dose of scallywag scuttlebutt.

Big names and bad guys

If a certain big-name sportsman never makes it back to play top level in Melbourne, at least he’ll have some interesting memories of our great city.

Among them will be spending the night enjoying the high life with a major underworld player and his entourage in the northern suburbs.

Thankfully, he didn’t upset the host, a man with a hard-earned reputation for snapping necks and cashing cheques in his various organised crime rackets.

Long-deleted social media images showed the star cosying up with the criminal who has been of interest to many Victoria Police over the years, a handful of which include Echo, Lunar, VIPER and the defunct Santiago.

Homicide and major drug squad detectives have also had cause to look into his activities over the past two decades.

The trip out north might not have been a completely foreign experience for the sportsman, who seems to have a thing for the company of bad boys.

In fact, there was big trouble at one point years later when some angry fellows turned up at a luxury CBD hotel with intent to give him a stern talking to and probably a bit more.

Anyway, he agreed to settle up on whatever was causing their disagreement and the whole thing blew over.

All of which has absolutely nothing to do with then Collingwood star Alan Didak’s big night out with the Hells Angels, notably one Christopher Wayne Hudson, not long before Hudson shot three people, killing one, in the shocking incident known as the CBD shooting in June, 2007.

Alan Didak (right) alongside Collingwood CEO Gary Pert, addresses the media over his encounter with Christopher Wayne Hudson in June 2007.

We raise this only to point out that the mutual attraction between professional sports people and professional crooks has been around since Lions v Christians was the main event at the Colosseum.

A sadder and wiser Didak would days later confess that he had been with Hudson when the latter lunatic fired on police from a speeding car in Campbellfield.

Didak told them he was intoxicated at the time, that he was not in control of the situation and feared for his own safety. All of which had the ring of truth.

Hudson had form, having courted serious trouble by defecting from rival group The Finks the year before, 2006. The defection caused the so-called “Ballroom Blitz”, a murderous riot at a kickboxing night at a venue on the Gold Coast.

Hudson was shot in the chin and some might wonder if it might have been better for innocent people later if that bullet had been better aimed.

Because it was Hudson, off his brain with “roid rage” and a cocktail of other drugs, who pulled a pistol and shot dead the brave and decent lawyer, husband and father Brendan Keilar, when he intervened to stop Hudson beating a young woman in the street outside a notorious strip club.

Hudson also shot and seriously wounded another brave passerby, Dutch backpacker Paul De Waard, as well as the young woman he was assaulting, Carla Douglas.

Hudson dumped his pistol and a jumper and went on the run for two days. He hid out with associates at Wallan, north of Melbourne, but gave himself up two days later.

Drugs, drink and gunpowder do not mix well.

Cornes meets the fuzz

Kane Cornes is known for making some very harsh assessments in his role as an AFL commentator.

But Cornes has elevated a cop to legend status after he let him off with a warning for doing an illegal right turn last week.

Cornes told his SEN listeners that he was in an online work meeting and headed for the gym when the officer grabbed his attention in a gym car park.

The member was kind enough to let him finish the discussion then politely told him about his error, before issuing a warning.

Even a man as frequently abrasive as Cornes fully appreciated not dropping the cash and demerit points.

“Legend”, was his reaction.

Kane Cornes elevated one of the boys in blue to legend status. Picture: Sarah Reed

A Nazi situation

Even the best-intentioned legislative change can be complicated by the law of unintended consequences.

Victoria’s ban on eejits getting around making Nazi salutes in public is one such case.

It seems the plan was to outlaw the salute’s use by the small contingent of extreme far-right figures who are desperate to get attention by offending any way possible.

Unfortunately, a blanket ban of the salute naturally risked hauling in by-catch who probably don’t deserve a criminal conviction.

Here’s an example. A policewoman’s ill-advised gesture of disrespect at the force’s academy resulted in her being considered for criminal charges. But those were sensibly ruled out after Office of Public Prosecutions advice there was no reasonable prospect of conviction.

The well-intentioned law to stamp out Nazi salutes has caught up some innocent parties. Picture: David Crosling

Same with a bloke who’d “offended” during a big day at the Oaks Day race meeting.

These people, of course, are “guilty” merely of a slightly tasteless gesture, exactly as seen on the comedy classic Fawlty Towers, when Basil goose steps around the room doing the old Heil Hitler routine.

Every other schoolkid used to do it once, for laughs, along with deeply tasteless concentration camp jokes. Which means it will be very hard for police to decide when exactly such a salute is a sincere symbol of hate speech, as opposed to a tasteless but harmless prank.

It will be interesting to see what impact this confusion has on their appetite to lay charges over Nazi salutes in future. Cops have enough to do to cope with real crimes to property and safety without criminalising stupidity, bad manners and “jokes.”

Dear Dorthy Deadline

Deadline is here to help, as in Dear Dorothy Dix, when it comes to readers or other honest citizens posing questions about matters of crime and punishment, law and order etc.

This week we are responding to the home renovator in Crevelli St, Preston, who found a very old shotgun when he knocked down a wall in his kitchen.

As the renovator is from Adelaide he is the innocent type, apart from hearing about serial killers in the City of Churches. His question is this: does the presence of the hidden shotgun suggest that he is living in a former den of criminality.

The political answer is: Not necessarily. Yes, Crevelli St and the local area around there was known as “Little Chicago” and had its share of scallywags and reptiles, some of whom would end up on the waterfront or in shallow graves. One such was the hard man Shane Goodfellow, shot dead by the late Alphonse Gangitano over a difference of opinion at a party in St Kilda a long time ago.

A renovator found a very old shotgun when he knocked down a wall in his kitchen.

But the old shotgun is a “hammer gun”, as we can see from the ornate hammers, which dates it way back probably to pre-World War 1, if not the 1890s or thereabouts. It is exactly the sort of firearm that everyone’s granddad had back when rabbit shooting and duck shooting was part of life and when a lot of suburban people had moved to the city from the bush.

As such, it’s the sort of gun that a well-meaning member of the family, or maybe granddad himself, hid away from the kids several decades ago and forgot about. Tradies find old guns hidden in roof spaces, walls and under houses all the time, and mostly it has nothing to do with criminality.

The bad sign is if the guns are sawn-off, if they are loaded, or if they are taped underneath a coffee table or kitchen table so the owner could shoot unwelcome visitors with a minimum of effort.