Driving ambition
Melissa Ryan
The Age
June 23, 2005
In his first in-depth interview since his drink-driving debacle cost Richmond a $600,000 sponsorship, Jay Schulz tells Melissa Ryan of his despair at the fallout - and the debt he believes he still owes the Tigers.
This was the season when Jay Schulz, apprentice key defender, was meant to stand up and make his presence felt for Richmond. Instead he became known as the young man who lost his club a $600,000 sponsor.
Almost three months after that March night when Schulz was booked for speeding - doing 80 km/h in a 40 zone - and driving with a blood alcohol level of 0.065, he says he is still haunted by the consequences of the Transport Accident Commission's termination of its 16-year sponsorship of the club.
Although Schulz was the second Tiger in four years to be caught drink-driving, it was on his head that the ensuing controversy fell when the TAC decided enough was enough.
The 20-year-old has learnt serious lessons from his mistake and said this week he would not be able to leave the matter behind him until he repaid his club, coach and teammates by becoming a regular senior player.
"I still see myself as someone who lost a major sponsor of the club and you don't really want to hold that to your name. No one does," Schulz said.
"It hit pretty hard. I know a lot of people said it's not you, but when the penny drops, you're at the end of it. That hit pretty deep but I still had a lot of support and the boys said, 'You've just got to let it go or you're just going to go backwards with yourself,' so I've just been trying to do that as much as possible and get back to the footy.
"I'm obviously very sorry and very remorseful for what I did, and I don't want people to think I'm remorseful because I got caught, I'm remorseful because of what I actually did. I did the wrong thing and I'm sorry for that.
"I told the club (at the time) if it's going to save our sponsorship, you've got every right to give me the flick and I'll totally accept that because of what's happened, but Terry (coach Wallace) said straight away we're not even going to consider that. That does make you feel a little bit better in a time when you're feeling the worst.
"The boys have been fantastic and the club organising a new sponsor (the Australian Financial Group) as quickly as they did, it was a relief."
When Schulz was pulled over at 1am in Malvern Road, Prahran, as he drove home after visiting friends, he knew what was about to happen. "So many things went through the head and I knew I was stuffed," he said.
His third mistake that night - after being out midweek when in rehab for a badly broken ankle that had been shattered in the Wizard Cup, and the graver error of drink-driving and speeding - was not to immediately call football manager Paul Armstrong, or Wallace.
Schulz, who had a scheduled weights session that morning, had hoped he would be able to tell the club then but, by that stage, Wallace had already been fielding calls about the incident.
Determined to see what kind of character Schulz had, Wallace waited to see if the player would call him. Schulz, feeling sick to the stomach with fear that he had wrecked his football dream, phoned him that night.
The next day he met Wallace and the leadership group, and apologised to his teammates. The club fined him $5000, the maximum amount under the AFL players' code of conduct, but had no intention of letting him go.
"It's like family," chief executive Steven Wright said. "If a member of your family makes a mistake, you don't kick him out of home."
Schulz's parents flew to Melbourne from South Australia and stayed for almost a week as the media scrutiny and public backlash was at its heaviest.
"I never felt more ashamed or more disappointed in myself for what happened, after realising what I'd done," he said. "I'd never seen my dad sit there and not say anything and I've never seen 40 blokes look more disappointed than what they did."
So distressed were Schulz's parents at what had happened and the cost to the club, that they also apologised to Wallace, with the coach desperately trying to reassure them that they had nothing to be sorry for.
"To have them apologising to us, I was sitting there going: 'You haven't done anything wrong. You bring up your kid, you bring him up as a good-natured kid in every other way. He's made a social indiscretion which a lot of people have made.' I don't expect the parents to be sitting there apologising to us about what happened," Wallace said.
"But it was such a public thing that they felt the need to do so, and that hurts him as well, to see his parents in that sort of distress."
From the moment Schulz addressed the players, Richmond considered the matter closed. Wallace was adamant that he would be treated as just another player on the list.
"Realistically, with the media scrutiny on him and everything else, he'd done his penance. We really needed to make sure then that he was back in the fold and treated like everyone else. That was our major emphasis," Wallace said.
"The one thing I've been relatively pleased about is that it doesn't seem to have any major effect on him . . . (if he was) shying away from the group a little bit, getting on doing what he needs to do and then getting away from the place, and being ostracised, well, I haven't seen that.
"I've seen a natural Jay around the place and I think that's pleasing."
Because of the broken ankle, Schulz's first half of the season has been about recovery and rediscovering match fitness, although he had a scare in his first VFL match when he rolled the ankle.
But with the second half of the season on him, and in contention to push for a spot in the senior side, Schulz aims to regain respect by fulfilling the defensive role in the seniors that Wallace has in mind for him at the moment.
But for now, the eager Schulz just wants to get back to what he does best: playing football.
"I don't think, for myself, I'll be able to move on properly until I actually give something back to the team," Schulz said. "Until that happens, I won't fully move on from it. But that's just up to me."
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