WHAT a shock to see Eagles player Ben Cousins flattened by his drug problem. For years I have known he and a few of his mates were hanging around some pretty well-known drug dealers in Perth. No-one told them that when you lay down with drug dealers you wake up in a police cell – or a drug clinic.
Cousins thought these blokes were his friends. A drug dealer a friend? Do me a favour. It makes as much sense as keeping a scorpion as a pet.
Drug dealers are like everyone else. They love to be around famous people so they go out of their way to link up with actors, TV types and footy players.
You want the flash car, the blonde girlfriend with plastic tits and the footy player mates. Then in Australia, you’ve made it.
Now a kid like Cousins was probably given his drugs cheap to begin with, but then they said he was spending $3000 a week on drugs. Now that’s a lot of money. Where were his friends then? The Mr Big in WA is an old Melbourne boy. With one phone call he could have told the rest of his crew, ‘No more drugs for Ben.’
But he didn’t. Some friend.
I like to be around famous people too. I have pictures of me with people like Jimmy Barnes, and he is a top bloke. Nowadays I am a retired crook and can’t get people into trouble. If I saw Eddie McGuire in the street now, I’d go over and say hello. Whereas when I was up and about, I wouldn’t bother him because it could cause embarrassment for him. But the Perth crew hung onto those footy players like they were the Royal Family and no-one over there did a thing.
The police tipped off the footy club that they were going down the wrong track and what did it do?
Sweet fuck-all.
I reckon footy clubs should each have an old copper on staff. Someone like Brian ‘The Skull’ Murphy could be there in the background just watching what was going on and moving the wrong types out the door.
Footy coaches might know a bit about the game, but they don’t know much else. When they told Ben to go out and get the pill, they didn’t know he would take them literally.
There have been some footy players who have crossed over to the dark side.
There was one famous one who was the heavy for a drug crew, though I suspect if it had got real nasty he would have headed to the interchange bench quick smart in case he got his head knocked off by the even heavier guys. If you catch my drift.
There was another player who did a good line in taking his mates’ golf clubs to the pawnbroker so he could fund his gambling habits and another who moved a fair bit of counterfeit money.
Just as well, he wasn’t much of a ruckman and played most of his time away from the big league.
I think one of the things that made me turn into a crook was that there wasn’t a war for me and I always wanted to be a soldier.
Once I went down my track, I always wanted to be the best and most famous. I knew they would remember me, Squizzy Taylor and Ned Kelly. Blokes like Alphonse were always only going to be footnotes in the history of crime.
I will always be remembered but being recognised has its down side. Most people are really nice and polite but some people are quite rude. They stuff something in front of you and say, ‘Sign this.’
I have always thought it should be legal to shoot maybe every tenth autograph hunter so the others will queue up politely and remember to say, ‘Thank you’. But then again, I’m old-fashioned.
I was in the outback once when an Aboriginal boy asked for an autograph. I signed my name and he gave it back saying, ‘No – use your real name – Eric Bana.’ So I signed it ‘Eric Bana’. Stuff it, why not? I gave him his start and he has never even bothered to invite Margaret and me to Hollywood. Not even once, so bugger him. Then again, my passport might set off a few alarms at the LA airport, so maybe it doesn’t matter too much, Eric.
The truth is I wasn’t much of a crook: because, when you look at it, I spent more than twenty years in jail. Wasted the best years of my life.
I was tough, mad and violent, but the best crooks these days go to work with a pen and a computer, not with iron bars and guns.
Some blokes seem to run the underworld when they get others to do their dirty work. The real tough men are assigned to be foot soldiers. I’m glad I’m well out of it.
So I’ve ended up now with a few books, some paintings, a film made about me, no ears and a crook liver.
Maybe I should have been a bank clerk and worn a cardigan rather than a bullet-proof jacket.
The funny thing is in the world of crime I was a master strategist and tactician. I knew the moves of my opponents and could ambush them at will.
But in the world of ‘honest’ business, I have been constantly betrayed. When Jimmy Loughnan attacked me from behind in Pentridge, I blamed myself, as I should have seen it coming. But on the outside, there is no warning.
The snakes wear designer suits and the hyenas have cosmetically enhanced designer white teeth. So many people have come to me with schemes where ‘we’ will get rich. I didn’t know that in the business world ‘we’ means ‘they’.
There are crooks who would give you their word and that was always enough. But in the business world, people lie and cheat and then go home to a roast dinner without a moment’s thought.
Are they crazy? Here is me, a self-declared killer, a no-eared psychopath with a short attention span and they turn up saying, ‘Look, Chopper – we’re sorry but that money we promised you hasn’t come through – but let’s do lunch. I’ll get my people to talk to your people.’
It is at moments like those I think of ringing some of my people – people like Dave the Jew or Amos Atkinson and suggest we do one more job for old time’s sake.
But I have sworn that I am retired and if the snakes want to slither around with forked tongues, what am I to do but cop it?
I am bankrupt. I owe money. My health is rooted.
For years in H Division, more than thirty of us had to share the same razor when we shaved. Now all of us have hepatitis. And no-one gives a stuff. Fair enough, too. We did the crimes and got locked up for what we did. No point whining about it now.
But there is one thing I do know. I promised to outlive my enemies and now they are all dead and gone.
Bye-bye Dennis Allen, you drug-dealing wombat, Toodleoo Jason, Mark and Lewis Moran – the clan with big mouths and long pockets. Ciao Alphonse, the Plastic Godfather, and see ya Sid Collins.
I was the one voted most likely to die. But I’m still here after all these years, boxing on, still pleading not guilty.
The last man standing.