Zak Butters opens up on sister’s drug addiction, why he loves footy — and Ken Hinkley
Zak Butters sometimes cried on the way to training as he tried to deal with a drug addiction that stalked his family. Port Adelaide’s young star tells Mark Robinson how ‘chats in Kenny’s office’ have helped put him in his happy place.
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Kenny Hinkley had five minutes to talk before darting off to a review with the players after Port Adelaide’s qualifying win over Geelong.
It was Monday lunchtime, about 12.55pm, but once he started talking about Zak Butters, he gave the impression he could talk about him for hours.
You see, Kenny is good with the so-called troubled lads and it’s why, every so often, Butters saunters into Kenny’s office, plumps on a chair, and starts talking — about everything other than footy.
Butters has had plenty to unburden.
About growing up. About his sister’s drug addiction. About home in Darley, outside of Bacchus Marsh. About finding his “happy place” in his second season at Port Adelaide.
“Zak’s a young fella who had some challenges around his family and I think I’ve probably been the safe spot to go to when some of those things have been challenging, that are not Mum and Dad because Mum and Dad are dealing with the same problems,” Hinkley said.
“Somehow, I seem to be able to connect with boys who have had a few challenges and probably because my own upbringing, being one of 10, there’s been a few challenges in our family.”
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Front of mind for Hinkley ahead of the review was the three-way contest which saw Butters split Geelong’s Jed Bews and Tom Stewart and pave the way for Peter Ladhams to kick the closing goal.
“I watched it about 10 times,’’ Hinkley said, introducing the mindset of a young player who missed out on a Rising Star nomination in his first year and who made the All-Australian squad of 40 in his second season.
“That’s what he does. His world is footy. His life is footy. For him to be that person in that moment for his teammates is really important to him.
“Remember the stoppage goal, roving to Scotty Lycett? He’s done that four or five times this year.
“He brings an incredible amount of energy because he wants to be that person who does it.”
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Butters’ character, he said, was based on care.
“You asked the question before … we connect because I care and he cares back,” Hinkley said.
“He walks into my office and says I need one of those chats. One of those chats is just sitting in my office and him talking.
“Whatever we talk about doesn’t have a road map to it. It’s just one of those chats.’’
What would you ask if you had to interview him?
“Why do you love footy so much? Why is footy so important to you, Zak?” Hinkley said.
“He needs to make this work. He wants to make this work because he wants to make a lot of people happy.
“His mum and dad and his sister, all the challenges in his life, he wants them to go away because of footy.’’
THE BOY FROM DARLEY
So, what does footy mean to Zak Butters?
“I’m no good at other things,’’ Butters said.
“I wasn’t great at school, I wasn’t great at anything growing up, other than footy. I put all my eggs in the one basket.”
Footy made up Butters’ earliest and favourite memories.
On Saturday mornings, mum Renee would drop him at the Darley Football Club “down the road from home”, flick him $10 and Butters would run water for the under-18s, watch the ressies, watch the ones and be home by 7pm.
He was seven years old.
“For training, I’d run or ride the bike to training because Mum and Dad worked pretty long hours and on Saturdays Mum would drop me down to the ground,” he said.
“Basically, I lived at the footy club. That was my weekends.”
Life was sweet. He’d watch and play every weekend for Darley until he was 16 and then for the Western Jets and representative teams after that
It was about this time, though, that life changed.
His older sister Tiarni, who he adored, fell into drugs and addiction — which is a scourge in small-town Victoria — and the once happy lad with the Sherrin in his hand became disjointed and angry.
Small-town talk — Darley’s population is about 9000 — led to fights at school and outside school, both stemming from his protection of and devotion to his sister.
Football was his safe place.
“I love footy,” Butters said.
“It’s been an escape with my sister growing up, and my family, it’s the one thing that’s never let me down.
“I had footy as an escape and it’s why I spent most weekends watching footy or playing. It’s been my saviour in a way.
“My upbringing was pretty good. I wouldn’t say I grew up struggling at all. Me and my sister grew up together. It did get a bit challenging about Year 9 or 10 when she started playing up.
“I didn’t like going to school. That’s when it started getting challenging.
“I didn’t want to go to school and face everyone. I was a bit embarrassed, and at the same time angry and frustrated.
“If anyone brought it up, I’d want to fight them or tell them what I thought of them.
“Looking back, it wasn’t the right way to go about things. But I was an angry person for a couple of years. It broke me in a way, but it made me in a way as well.’’
Always, there was footy.
For Years 11 and 12, footy took him to Maribyrnong College, the famed sports school in Melbourne.
Most days he’d catch public transport from Darley, an hour-and-a-half there and an hour-and-a-half back.
His footy thrived and at the 2018 national draft — the famed Rozee-Butters-Duursma draft — he was taken with pick 12.
He was just 70kg and was described as “liking to run with the ball and take the game on, and he’s crafty when stationed closer to goal”.
Mum moved to Adelaide with him in his first year and still lives with him now.
Sister Tiarni joined them this year after she completed her rehab and only left for home a fortnight back.
“She’s in a really good place,’’ Butters said.
The mum-son relationship was the most important in his life.
“Mum has been awesome for me,” he said.
“We’re really close. Dad has worked long hours his whole life and Tiarni was out of our lives for a couple of years with her issues.
“It was sort of me and mum a lot of times.”
Butters is a unique young man. He’s 20, looks 17 and talks like he’s 30, with a genuine warmth and from the heart.
Like, what does footy mean to him? It enabled him to buy a house in Adelaide at the start of this year, which helped gather and provide for his family.
“I wouldn’t have been able to do that without footy,” he said.
“Growing up, I didn’t take responsibilities for her actions, but I’m trying my best to help her out.
“To see what she went through, I think it affected me as much as it did her. I took it a bit personally.
“Maybe we could’ve done a bit more. When it happens in your family, I think everyone takes it a bit personal.
“I’ve also tried to help put her in a better position and I think it helped me to be the person I am today, due to the decisions I’ve made in my life.
“I don’t really drink, I’m not a massive party person. I love getting around the boys, though.”
Internally at Port, they say he’s the pest, the clown, the barometer in the room.
“It’s probably like that because growing up, footy clubs have let me be that person,’’ he said.
“I’m probably not comfortable outside of the footy bubble. Outside of footy clubs, I’m pretty awkward and shy.
“I love footy so much, I think footy brings out my personality.”
This season has been a watershed year.
He had a shoulder reconstruction at the end of 2019, was running inside two weeks, and did extras to be fitter for the high half-forward role.
Mentally, with mum and sister with him, he was content, he said, for the first time in five years. And his football thrived again.
“I’ve finally settled down and found my happy place,” he said.
HARDLY SOFT AS BUTTERS
He was always small.
When Butters played juniors for Darley on Sunday mornings in the Ballarat league, and when his father, Wayne, drove him there and back, dad always had the best advice.
“I’ve always been the smallest and skinniest and I remember when I was growing up, dad was a pretty stubborn, old, tough guy,” he said.
“He said the only way I was going to make it was to play tough and hard and want to compete.
“I didn’t have the physical attributes and I probably still don’t, and dad said since I was nine or 10, work hard and want it more than everything else. That’s stuck with me.”
Two incidents this year speak of his fortitude on the field.
The first was against North Melbourne’s Jack Ziebell in Round 16.
Tough Jack went at tough Zak and Jack came off second best.
And there was Zak jogging off with a smile.
“I thought I was in trouble and if I pulled out, my dad would let me know about it after the game, so I had to go,” he said.
“I smiled purely out of relief and happiness. Somehow I came off the better end.”
The second incident was the Bews-Stewart clash for the loose ball.
Butters’ description of how it happened lacks the theatre of what played out.
“I was thinking either win or halve the ball,” he said.
“We all got there at the same stage, I sort of bumped Bews into Stewart, I saw them bump into each other, I was left there, the ball was sitting in between my legs and I grabbed it and handballed it forward.”
That’s the play Hinkley said he watched 10 times.
THE COACH AND THE KID
Port Adelaide has psychologists, but Butters said he preferred the ear of the coach.
“From day one, he opened is arms towards me. I haven’t had too many people in my life like that except for mum and dad and pop,” Butter said.
“I’m pretty close to my dad, but he’s an old-fashioned kind of guy, pretty ruthless, but he’s still caring at the same time.
“I’ve probably never opened up to him too much. I’ve probably not opened up to mum, either.
“I think it’s because I care about them so much, and especially with the few years with my sister, I thought they had enough on their plate already as a wife and husband and I took a back seat and played footy.
“That’s where I think I made them happy, playing footy, getting drafted and that’s the role I wanted to fulfil in that story.”
When Butters first sauntered into Hinkley’s office earlier his year, he off-loaded all the above and more.
“All the stuff I’ve never got off my chest growing up and bottled in for a few years,’’ Butters said.
It unburdened him, he said.
“I felt like I was living a bit of a lie to everyone in my life. All my mates, all the players here, I was struggling at games last year with what was going on back home,” he said.
“I was crying on the way to training some days. You have these days with stuff going on back home and you can’t be there for certain people.
“But I’ve matured a lot in a year. I feel like I’m my true self, not portraying someone I’m probably not.
“Every day I come to the footy club I’m actually happy. You probably find when you tell your story, all the blokes in the room tell similar stories.”
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