Danny Frawley found the courage to be vulnerable and saved lives

For the first three decades of his career under the AFL’s bright spotlight there were many different faces to Danny Frawley.

Danny Frawley at a training camp with his beloved St Kilda in 2014. Picture: Colleen Petch

For the first three decades of his career under the AFL’s bright spotlight there were many different faces to Danny Frawley.

The larrikin media performer, the heart-on-his-sleeve Richmond coach, the St Kilda captain who played hard and partied with the same famed intensity.

But if Frawley was quick with a quip or fiercely defiant of his critics, it never came with a skerrick of vulnerability.

Frawley finally lifted the lid on his private pain two years ago, when he spoke for the first time of his battles with mental health.

A man who coached, played and worked at Collingwood, Richmond, St Kilda, Triple M and SEN and Fox Footy will be remembered in many ways to those with whom he came into contact as a self-described Bayside boy via the bush.

Yet his legacy will also be defined by his ability to share his story, spending the past two years urging men across Australia to seek help for their mental health issues. The 56-year-old spent an hour in the Herald Sun for the Sacked podcast last month, accepting the invitation without a moment’s hesitation to recount those dark moments of his sacking as Richmond coach. There were a few provisos. He didn’t want to settle scores, he didn’t want to bash the Richmond executives who moved him on.

But the battles he had faced throughout his career? Frawley was an open book. He spoke about not being embarrassed any more, having finally decided in 2014 he needed to seek help after a nervous breakdown outside the MCG. He hadn’t slept for three weeks as stress from his role at the AFL Coaches Association had him at tipping point.

“I just thought (depression) was like a broken arm,” he said. “It took me three or four years to come out. I am well aware when I do too much now what a lack of sleep does to you.

“Basically it turns you insane. Through those Richmond years I never lost a wink of sleep. Not a wink. Back in the day I was a stoic farm boy. Seven generations from Ireland, potato farmers. If you have got an issue, grab a tissue. If you have an ailment work it off. If you have a big one on the squirt, get up an hour earlier and work it off. That was in your DNA.

“Manning up in the past was to suffer in silence. Manning up now is to put your hand up. I have got no problem talking about mental health and what I went through because I hope I help a lot of people in that.”

An hour-long audience with Frawley was captivating and ­enlightening. All the old bulldust had fallen away, replaced by someone still happy to laugh it up with his mates from Fox Footy’s The Bounce but content to be himself in quieter moments.

That figure was much more complex and layered, Frawley aware being the TV and radio funny man paid the bills but wasn’t all of him any more. He spoke about the old scores he tried to settle that he now ­regretted, about dipping his head in the bay each morning to feel alive in those last days as Richmond’s caretaker coach. He could recount with clarity the single moment he knew his Richmond tenure had taken too much out of him, as the Bungaree community and his family banded around him in the week after a fan spat at him walking down the ­Etihad Stadium race.

There were regrets — never ­returning to coach alongside his great mate Trevor Barker at ­St Kilda, the decision to top up Richmond’s list in 2001 after the emotional charge to a preliminary final. But mostly Frawley was proud of the struggle to turn the Coaches Association into a genuine support structure for sacked and budding coaches, to support his family after his removal as Tigers coach had them downsizing from their dream home to a smaller house in the same street.

It meant he could finally be content with his lot in life rather than chasing the next rainbow.

“The (breakdown) was the by-product of being on this treadmill of life and not smelling the roses, trying to please everyone other than myself, that’s what it boiled down to. I always wanted to be a premiership player, a premiership coach, always wanted to be the No 1 in the media, wanted to be a great administrator, wanted to do everything. But looking back thank god (the admission) came when it did. It made me really reflect and I thought, ‘I am really battling here’.”

Football will mourn Frawley forever like it does his great St Kilda mate Barker. But it will do so having finally coming to know the real Frawley, one who saved countless lives with a different kind of bravery.