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Crackers' Call - New book to shed light on Fevola saga

01/16/2012 04:07:02 AM

Brendan Fevola's writing a book, I don't know if it'll be a best-seller but it could be very interesting.

Possibly along with a few other people, he is the most wasted talent who played league footy.

The end of his career came when he was 29, he was running around for the Scorpions seconds and then in the seniors last year.

He acquitted himself reasonably well, he played some good games and then he put himself in the draft.

No-one came a-knocking.

The next minute, a phone call came from the Scorpions that went along the lines of 'don't call us, we'll call you'. He had nowhere to go.

Then of course the old chestnut, 'I'm going to America to become a kicker for one of the big football teams', was trotted out. I don't know if this will happen.

I like Fevola, I've met him socially and I don't mind him, I think he's a nice person but he should have been brought into line many, many years ago when he was a young player at Carlton.

David Parkin said he failed him, well he certainly has failed him. So much so that Fevola wouldn't have any money, he had a gambling problem - he possibly still has it - and at the end of his career you can say, 'what a waste'.

One thing people have got to learn in their life, and the same goes for Denis Pagan when he was at North Melbourne with Wayne Carey, you've got to straighten out footballers and make sure they toe the line.

Over in Western Australia there's two premiership players in psychiatric wards, namely Daniel Chick and Ben Cousins, who didn't toe the line and weren't brought into line.

Somewhere along the line in a footballer's life, he must be made accountable.

If you're getting 30 kicks and you're kicking four goals a game and you're doing all the team assist things, everybody wipes the peccadilloes under the mat.

Then, all of a sudden, they come home to roost such as in Fevola's case.

Carlton got rid of him because they couldn't handle him any longer then Brisbane got rid of him because they couldn't handle him any longer.

One day he'll wake up and say 'what happened to my career?'.

Of course everyone will point the finger and say 'you self-destructed, Brendan', but somewhere along the line somewhere in the dark past, someone should have turned the lights on for him and said 'you don't do this, you don't do that and this is what you do and what you don't do'.

No one did that forcefully enough and Fevola just went rampant.

The AFL don't want his type of brand anywhere near them and they won't want him writing a book.

I hope the book tells all and can be an example to younger players who have a tendency to misbehave and they can use it as a bible and say 'I won't do this and go down this path'.

I'm looking forward to the book.

 
Photograph Copyright : Getty Images