Scott Hodges book extract: The day I decided to beat up Jars
IN this exclusive extract from his new book, footy legend Scott Hodges tells about the day he planned to bash Crows teammate Andrew Jarman.
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INSIDE THE SUNDAY MAIL TOMORROW: Scott Hodges book extract part 2 — The day I wanted to end it all
MY face went flushed. I felt the heat rising up in my neck. I was boiling. Wild with anger. I didn’t know what to say. The next thing I knew I was hiding downstairs in the car park, waiting to bash one of my teammates.
The team had been going poorly. We had lost a few games in a row and the players had decided it was time to try something different. We all got together in a meeting room at Football Park and convened a group discussion. It was like a formal meeting, just the players, where one by one we identified where we thought we were going wrong.
It was the kind of thing I hated. It was made worse by the fact that I hadn’t been able to get myself right from injury since I joined the Crows in 1991, their debut year. I’d had two operations on my knee and my back had been playing up from all the weights training. It was the middle of the 1992 season and I was out of the side again. All I wanted to do was play footy, but my body kept letting me down.
Andrew Jarman was the closest thing the team had to a class clown. I got on all right with Jars, he was a funny bloke, but he had a mouth on him at times. So there we all were, sitting in a meeting room having this weird love-in, trying to pinpoint our problems and come up with solutions.
Jars piped up. He looked over at me and said words to the effect that he was really sick of my attitude. He said that I was miserable, I was negative, that I didn’t look interested, that I was dragging the rest of the team down with me.
I have always been a pretty shy sort of a bloke and I don’t like talking much at the best of times, especially in front of groups, and it felt to me that I now had one of my own teammates bagging me in front of the entire team. I felt embarrassed. I felt humiliated. And then I got so f***ing angry that I decided I was going to beat Jars up.
I said a few words in my defence, something about how no one wanted to have injuries, that I was trying to get over them, that I wanted nothing more than to be back on the park. ‘Injuries are injuries, mate,’ I said. ‘If I could play, I would play.’ I wasn’t putting it on.
After I said my piece I sat there stewing over what Jars had said. I got angrier and angrier. Is that what this prick really thinks of me? That I was getting around like this for fun or for show?
Pretending that I was injured? What gave him the right to say what he said? In front of the entire bloody team?
As the meeting wrapped up I snuck down to the car park and I waited. I was going to lie in wait until Jars came down to his car, then I was going to flog him.
I was standing in the dark, leaning against one of the cement pillars, when I heard footsteps.
‘Is that you, Grinder?’ (Grinder was my footy nickname, only used by a select few.)
It was Darel Hart, who had been Jars’ teammate at North Adelaide before they both debuted for the Crows.
‘Yep, it is,’ I replied.
‘What the hell are you doing there, mate?’ Harty asked.
‘Nothing.’
‘No, seriously, what are you doing just standing down here on your own?’
‘I’m waiting for Jars, mate. I’m going to beat the shit out of him.’ Harty had to spend a decent amount of time talking me down. He told me to stay calm, pull my head in, put it aside and go home.
It was a good chat.
I didn’t end up seeing Jars that night and I never fronted him about what he said about me that day. Looking back, the manner in which I reacted that day was a sign that things weren’t right.
I still think that Jars had no right to talk to me like that. It was out of line and he didn’t need to do it, but the way it made me feel, that almost physical reaction I had to his words, showed something wasn’t right.
The anxiety that I felt, the way it made me feel worthless as a person, the way I blew up afterwards ... all this was pointing to something darker that was coming on my horizon. Something that was coming at me big time.
A NOTHING SORT OF YEAR
The Crows’ 1991 season finished as a nothing sort of a year. We didn’t make the finals, and in the end I only played 13 games and kicked 30 goals.
It was much lower than my return had been at Port, obviously, and one hell of a comedown after my third flag with Port in 1990, when I kicked the record 153 goals and won the Magarey Medal.
I had tried to quit the Crows at the end of 1991 to go back to Port. I’d just had enough. There had been the dramas over my contract with Neil Kerley, all the media attention, abuse from fans, tensions with some teammates, but the Crows made it clear that I was a contracted player and that there was no way I would be going back to Port.
So I knuckled down and committed myself to playing for Adelaide, and got back into the senior side.
One thing that made life more bearable at the Crows was the arrival of star forward Tony Modra (‘Mods’) from West Adelaide in 1992.
Mods and I hit it off straightaway and have remained great mates ever since. It will surprise a lot of people to hear that as they assume Mods was the person who robbed me of my spot at full-forward for the Crows. I don’t see it that way. If other people do, good luck to them. It has never affected my friendship with Mods anyway.
It is hard to describe how big a name Tony Modra was in Adelaide. The city had never seen such a level of attention over one individual footy player.
Women loved him because of his looks, and he became a cult figure for the Crows fans. He had one of the best leaps in the history of Aussie rules and took so many hangers. He won mark of the year several times and was a brilliant full-forward, an absolute goalkicking machine.
I don’t resent any of it. He’s a top bloke and one of my best mates. I think that one of the reasons Mods and I got on so well from the start is that, despite all the hype he attracted, being mobbed by fans, nicknamed ‘Godra’ and all of that carry-on, he is essentially a quiet and shy bloke, too.
He has no ego. None of it went to his head. We are both no-bullshit people who would rather be getting away to the country for a few days to have a fish and sink some beers.
To this day, many people in Adelaide think Mods cost me my place at full-forward, and overshadowed everything I ever did for the team. It’s not true.
Mods wasn’t the reason things didn’t work out for me. Mods and I played a lot of good footy together. He was a gun all right, especially in 1993 when he won the Coleman Medal for the AFL’s leading goal kicker with 129 goals, an Adelaide club record that still stands today.
But I don’t blame Mods for the way my career panned out — I had my own dramas with injury and form. But there were times when Mods and I worked well together as a two-pronged attack. We played a lot of good footy together, including one of our last games, the 1993 preliminary final against Essendon.
That game still haunts me, as it does everyone else who played that day, and anyone who barracks for the Crows. We had that game won, and we would have gone on to play in a Grand Final the following weekend if not for a pretty questionable coaching decision that was made just before half-time.
RUNNING HOT AND COLD
In a way that 1992 season really summed up my on-again, off-again career with the Crows.
My whole time there was like a rollercoaster. The year started well as I finally found some fitness and form, and I got my eye in and started kicking goals pretty regularly.
I played seven of the first eight games of the season and was going along nicely. I kicked a couple against Footscray in round 1, then three against Fitzroy, four against Richmond, and my biggest haul to date for the Crows of 8.1 against Brisbane in round 6 at Footy Park.
That day was my 24th birthday, and I remember it like it was yesterday.
There were more than 42,000 people at Footy Park and the win got us up to fifth place on the ladder. I kicked eight of our 19 goals that day and took a screamer over my old teammate Marty Leslie, too. When your confidence is up, it’s up. It was a nice way to spend my birthday.
A couple of weeks later I did my knee again. Really badly. I missed the next 11 weeks. I was miserable. The club was going badly, too, losing four games in a row. It was during this period when we had that shithouse players’ meeting where Jars accused me of dragging everyone else down.
When I was out of the side with that knee injury, the media scrutiny about whether I was up to AFL standard started up again.
I wouldn’t piss on a lot of those journos if they were on fire. In contrast, Mods was starting to get a lot of positive media attention. He filled in for me at full-forward and kicked a bag, kicking five goals in successive matches against Collingwood and West Coast.
I finally came back late in 1992 after playing a few games for Port in the SANFL to find some form, and I actually did really well.
I kicked eight goals against Richmond, five against Brisbane and then 11.4 against Geelong at home at Footy Park, which would be my biggest haul ever for Adelaide. That Geelong game was great. We played exceptional footy that day. But it was all irrelevant in the end, because the Crows had fallen short of the finals. And whatever I had done on the park still wasn’t enough to silence my detractors among the media or our supporters.
On paper, I’d had a pretty reasonable sort of a year and was the leading goal kicker for the 1992 season with 48.19, which wasn’t bad, given that I had only played 13 AFL games for the year.
And if I could concentrate on my footy and not worry about what people were saying about me — whether it was the fans hanging shit on me behind the goals, teammates or people in the club hierarchy talking behind my back — I would be all right.
The truth is my heart was never really in it with Adelaide.
HAPPIER PLAYING IN THE SANFL
It says a bit about how I felt playing for the Crows that the happiest moment of my 1992 season was playing for Port in the SANFL finals alongside one of my good mates, a then very young Nathan Buckley.
We beat the old enemy Glenelg in the Grand Final, 17.3 105 to 7.7 49, and I kicked six goals straight in what was my fourth premiership with Port. It was such a great day. It absolutely bucketed down, but there were still more than 40,000 fans at Footy Park. Most of them were Port people, not one of whom left as we piled on the goals against Glenelg, even though they all copped a drenching. These were real fans.
It was a different story with Adelaide. The thing that pissed me off with all the external pressure I faced at the Crows is that most of the attention seemed to be on me.
It often felt like there was no-one else in the side. The media attention was just ridiculous and the fans’ expectations were over the top.
I felt like I was always on a hiding to nothing. Some of the journos were just out to make life tough for me. When I look back, I wish I was mentally stronger and more able to take the scrutiny, or to brush it aside.
I didn’t take it well and it affected me in a lot of ways. It meant that when things went wrong, I would slump down pretty quickly, because it felt like everyone was obsessed with my performance.
Those years playing for Adelaide were like falling off a cliff. I had come off such a high, from a club where the supporters just loved you and gave you all the time in the world, to this new joint where, if I wasn’t kicking at least five goals a week, I’d get spat on or told to f*** off back to Port Adelaide.
There was no escaping it. I couldn’t even go out with my missus without some prick shooting his mouth off.
It affected things with Julie and me. When I look back, I honestly think there were signs that I wasn’t right mentally at the Crows.
Sometimes the thing that triggered anxiety in me was simply people staring at me. Sometimes it was when I was out with Julie, at the shops or at a pub for a counter meal somewhere.
I hated people looking at me all the time. Sometimes they were completely innocent and being friendly, but I started thinking negative thoughts about it. What are they saying? What are they thinking? Why don’t they leave me alone?
All of the pressure affected Julie too. There was one time when she got so fed up with all the bullshit that some of the fans were saying about me on the FiveAA footy show that she just cracked it and rang the radio station and went on air telling people to leave me alone. I remember saying to her afterwards: “What did you do that for? It will turn it into more of a story, it will only make things worse.”
I shouldn’t have said that. I shouldn’t have told her off. She was doing it because she supported me and she could see the impact it was having on me. It was a kind thing for her to do because she was sick of all the bullshit too. She was backing me up, supporting me.
I don’t think I ever told Julie how it was all getting me down. Because I was so shy, I never opened up to anyone. It’s not that I was scared to discuss it, I didn’t know what it was that I was trying to discuss.
IN HIS OWN WORDS
On growing up in Salisbury
There were blokes who were always looking to start something, always on for a fight. I don’t know what it was — poverty, boredom, nothing to do, grog. You just had to look at someone the wrong way and they’d come after you. It wasn’t just fights. There were houses being bombarded with rocks, houses and cars getting broken into, vandalism, just stupid, anti-social things done by the same hard core of ratbags and shitheads in the area.
On debuting with the Magpies
I really had to pinch myself. I had grown up as a total Port tragic and now there I was in the thick of it at Alberton, training alongside the very men I had idolised through my childhood. Russell Ebert, whose numbers had covered my duffel coat, was my coach. Another of my childhood heroes, Greg Phillips, had come home to Alberton from the VFL, as had Bruce Abernethy, welcoming me into the team as an equal.
On being drafted to the Crows
I had never had any real interest in playing for a State composite team. As a Port man I was even hostile to the idea at first. All of us players felt a bit strange about it. We were Port people, Glenelg people, North, Norwood, West people ... suddenly we were surrounded by blokes who had been our opponents for years, acting like we were friends, and playing for a club that had been thrown together over a few hours in a boardroom.
On his four years with the Crows
The whole Crows experience was such a comedown from being at Port, both on and off the field. Leading goal kicker, three premierships, the Magarey Medal, best and fairest, but best of all, great teammates and great fans who would do anything for you, and you would do anything for them. Those years playing for Adelaide were like falling off a cliff.
On the Power
I must admit that I have struggled a bit with the Port Power concept because, at times, they have lived too much in the past. The Power have taken the name Port Adelaide, but Port Adelaide have got 34 premierships in the SANFL and the Power have only got one in the AFL in 20 years.
On his growing depression
I knew something wasn’t right, but I didn’t know what it was. I was too embarrassed to discuss it anyway. I was just flat and miserable, I didn’t want to talk, didn’t want to see people or get hassled by people.
On Graham Cornes
There was speculation that I’d had a massive blow-up or falling out with Cornesy. Obviously I was less than thrilled with the way he handled me in the 1993 preliminary final.
On Andrew Jarman
Andrew Jarman was the closest thing the team had to a class clown. I got on all right with Jars, he was a funny bloke, but he had a mouth on him at times. He said that I was miserable, I was negative, that I didn’t look interested, that I was dragging the rest of the team down with me. I got so f***ing angry that I decided I was going to beat Jars up.
On Tony Modra
Mods and I hit it off straightaway and have remained great mates ever since. It will surprise a lot of people to hear that, as they assume Mods was the person who robbed me of my spot at full-forward for the Crows. I don’t see it that way. If other people do, good luck to them.
On the 1993 Crows-Essendon preliminary final
It will rank forever as one of the greatest chokes in AFL history. It would deny the club a likely premiership, help cost the coach his job and push back the club’s hopes of Grand Final glory for several years. It also cemented my decision to walk out on the Adelaide Football Club.
On alcohol and drugs
In 1997 I was often drunk and I’d been using speed on and off since I was delisted by the Power. I used to get this stuff called ‘pink whizz’. I started taking it fairly regularly. The drugs were an escape from the reality of everything else. The end of footy, the end of my marriage. That’s the thing about speed, it made me feel invincible. It made me feel like I was on top of things and in control. It made me forget about the problems at home. It made me feel good about myself. While I was on it, that is. It was a different story coming down.
On his wife Kerry
When I met Kerry I felt immediately that she was the loveliest person I had ever met. She is kind to everyone, never says a bad word about anyone, and she would do anything for me. She was the first person I told about having depression. There was no judgment. She just wanted to help me get better.
On the Ramsgate incident
The bloke hit me with a Vodka Cruiser bottle. It made a cross-shaped cut on the back of my head. The bottle exploded and the glass broke into shards. Six months after it happened I was still finding pieces of glass coming out of my head. The doctor at the RAH told me how lucky I was, given that I was out cold before my face hit the ground. If the bottle had hit me in the temple, just a few millimetres away, it probably would have killed me.
On anxiety after football
I started saying to myself, ‘Christ, I wish I never played footy.’ I just don’t need this attention. It’s unwanted, it’s not needed, it’s not doing me any good. It’s making me paranoid. It was making me angry, too.
On football now
These days, aside from my regular socialising with my closer teammates, I don’t have that much to do with the Port Adelaide Football Club. I have nothing to do with the Crows. I barrack for Collingwood. Port are my second AFL team. I am the same as I have always been, Port in the SANFL, and Collingwood in the AFL. I am pretty much over footy now.
On modern AFL
I can’t believe that, with all the money the AFL makes, they have done absolutely nothing to make the game affordable for fans. This is meant to be the people’s game and most average families simply cannot afford to get along anymore. It’s not just ticket prices going through the roof, it’s the cost of food and drinks as well. If they don’t do something about it soon, the game will be lost to the average person.
On the toll of depression
I have now lost four of my Port Adelaide teammates to suicide. Four. They were husbands. They were dads. They were top blokes.
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Anyone experiencing a personal crisis or thinking about suicide can contact Lifeline on 131 114. Support for anyone living with depression and anxiety can be found at Beyond Blue on 1300 224 636.
Originally published as Scott Hodges book extract: The day I decided to beat up Jars
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