Carey/Confirmation Age Story

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A sorry tale that has torn a team apart

By Caroline Wilson

The story that has rewritten and ended Wayne Carey's golden career at the Kangaroos began much earlier but reached its lowest point four nights ago at a party in Warrandyte, at the home of Carey's teammate, Glenn Archer.

It was wife Lisa Archer's 30th birthday and while the band played on the tennis court, the action that counted took place inside. Wayne and Sally Carey had been among the first to arrive, along with Carey's vice-captain and close friend Anthony Stevens and his wife Kellie. Both couples had been childhood sweethearts.

A week earlier, Stevens and Carey had shared a lane at the North Melbourne pool, joking between laps. And Stevens had promoted the virtues of fatherhood at a Kangaroos fund-raiser, saying he wished he had started having children earlier.

But all that changed last Sunday night following an incident that took place at the party, involving Carey and Kellie Stevens.

By all reports, Archer tried to break up the angry altercation that followed between the North captain and Stevens and ended up getting hit himself. Three strong men who have fought so many valiant campaigns and won two flags together, alcohol-fuelled and tearing each other apart - it was a terrible sight.

So the party that witnessed the end of the Kangaroos as we know them did not end all that late. Stevens and Archer, however, sat up most of the night and did not make it the next day to the Labour Day morning training session.

By the time the Kangaroos' football manager, Geoff Walsh, found the pair, the strong feeling was that they could no longer play football alongside Carey. It was also on Monday that Stevens learnt that an extra-marital relationship between his wife and Carey had begun last year.

Struggling to hold himself and his young family together (Anthony and Kellie Stevens have a baby daughter Ayva) Stevens was consoled by club management, but was asked to keep himself together to the extent that he attend training - Stevens is weeks away from making a comeback from a knee injury - on Tuesday afternoon.

Walsh met coach Denis Pagan and held talks with North's new chief executive, Michael Easy, who has been battling to keep the club financially afloat since joining it last September.

Sally Carey, whose wedding took place in Wagga just over 12 months ago, was hospitalised earlier this week and placed under sedation.

Even early on Tuesday, there was a determination that the team could ride out the crisis. Stevens made it to training. That night, the popular 1999 best-and-fairest winner was being consoled by friends and trying to make sense of his upside-down life.

By yesterday morning, it was clear to all at the club that this was one indiscretion it could not cover up. In fact, Carey appeared to be one of the few remaining who thought the incident could be overcome for the good of the team.

Not his teammates. It came down to the captain or the club and the club won, although in truth there has been no winner in this dreadful saga. Carey's fellow players voted him out.

For three hours yesterday afternoon, Walsh, Easy and chairman Allen Aylett held talks with Carey's manager, Ricky Nixon, and Nixon's new colleague, Greg Miller. The meeting stretched out partly because Carey still did not accept the club's verdict and negotiations went back and forward.

It appears to have been Nixon who told Carey that his career at North was finished, although the club has still to come to terms with the player over his million-dollar contract.

Several staff wept last night in the Kangaroos' temporary administrative offices in Boundary Road when told by Easy that Carey was gone.

The North chief executive also telephoned AFL chief executive Wayne Jackson to inform him of the decision.

And then an hour later, at 6pm, Aylett and Walsh addressed the players at Arden Street. Pagan, still in shock, attended the meeting but did not speak and departed quickly. Carey told friends that it had been his choice to resign.

By 6.30pm the senior players - although not Carey, Stevens or Pagan - had moved to The Three Crowns restaurant in West Melbourne, where they met over dinner for three hours.


Surely this is the AFL's greatest scandal. Football's first million-dollar man, its biggest name is today in disgrace, forced out of the team he led and made famous for a decade.

Betrayed is not a word used often in football but there is no better one to describe the emotion that engulfs North Melbourne Football Club today.


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