Frawley: The depths of depression I couldn’t escapeHerald-Sun
28 Aug 2019Danny Frawley never wanted his players or family to know of his suffering — it was crippling. His handle on the Richmond job was slipping away and, once sacked, he fell into an abyss. He bravely tells his story to the Sacked Podcast.
It was the image Danny Frawley would not let his Richmond players see.
There he was cutting a lone figure, dunking his head on a winter’s morning in the frigid waters at Brighton.
The Tigers’ coach had few other sanctuaries from the media maelstrom in 2004, a spotlight that also shone on his wife, Anita, his three young daughters — Danielle, Chelsea and Keeley — his concerned parents and other embers of the close-knit Frawley clan.
Just three seasons after leading an underperforming Richmond to a 2001 preliminary final, the Tigers were in the midst of a losing streak and Frawley’s hold on the job was rapidly sliding away.
“I had to jump in the water … you would do it to just clear your head and to just feel alive,” Frawley told the Herald Sun’s Sacked podcast.
“You had to be strong for yourself … for your family … and for the club.
“I spent all my (spare) time jumping into the Bay before I went to the club because I didn’t want the players to know I was hurting.”
‘IT’S TAKEN TOO MUCH OUT OF ME’The bloodlust surrounding under-siege AFL coaches is rarely more intense than when a prime time Friday night flogging takes place.
Channel 9 made it an art form when they had the TV rights, stirring every emotion and capturing every moment almost as if it was a form of reality TV.
But what happened at what was then called Telstra Dome after Richmond’s 75-point capitulation to Adelaide in Round 5, 2004, took it to a new level.
Supporters were baying for blood as Frawley and the players walked from the ground that night.
One spat at Frawley, and in the direction of the players, which quickly became the talking point of an ugly night.
“Most Richmond supporters were outstanding, but that night cut to the quick a bit,” Frawley recounted.
“It’s not (on) and gladly it’s never happened since.
“I never felt it happen. It was only when the players walked out of the rooms that I saw it as a leading news story and you see your sister in tears the next day.
“A media guy got hold of her and all of a sudden I thought the Frawley name is getting mixed up in the whole scenario.”
The pressure on his family was intense; the support they gave back was immense.
“The whole of Bungaree was behind me. It was a tough week. The Footy Show wanted to get me on, and I was very emotional,” he said.
“I got my beautiful wife Anita to go on The Footy Show the next Thursday.
“Then we were playing another Friday night (against Hawthorn the next week) and Peter Everitt had a shot to ice the game near the siren (and missed). We won the game and I remember my late dad and my mum and family and busloads from Bungaree (coming to the game).
“They came down and I must admit subconsciously I thought, ‘Nup, that’s it, I am done’.
“I never told anyone and we won the game (by one point) and we didn’t win too many more after that.
“But that was the night mentally I thought, it’s taken too much out of me, out of my three girls, my mum and my dad.”
THE SHOWDOWNFrawley knew all about coaches under pressure. He had played for St Kilda where the revolving door at Moorabbin shunted coaches with ruthless monotony. Richmond had a reputation for being even worse.
He knew going into the 2004 season he was in the gun.
So he brought the issue to a head before the start of the season, calling president Clinton Casey to request a meeting.
“It was tough because they were umming and ahhing at the board meetings and basically I called Clinton (Casey) up and said before the season starts and said ‘let’s have a good chat about it’,” Frawley said.
“It got to the stage where if I didn’t make finals, it was all over and I think that was pretty realistic.
“We had two ordinary years (14th in 2002 and 13th in 2003), so that gave me the impetus to have a real fight for your life.”
Frawley was prepared to fight. He never minded a stoush, but the telltale signs were there.
“The issue with the Tigers in my time, you would probably go to a couple of board meetings and something would end up in the press the next day,” he said.
“That really frustrated me.
“There was always the loom(ing) of the ex-Tiger premiership player in the background and you guys would ring them up for a headline.
“The spectre of Sheeds would always be there. He was pretty supportive through the process and could have come to Richmond any time he wanted, let’s be brutally honest.”
A lunch with Casey, football manager Greg Miller and his own manager Ricky Nixon during the 2004 bye weekend brought about some contingency plans.
“I was always on the front foot and the win-loss, I think, Ieading into the bye, we were four wins and nine losses,” he recounted.
“So mathematically there were another nine games to go, so we were still a chance but I thought ‘we are no chance’.
“The easiest thing would be to put my hand up and say it’s all over.”
Frawley’s sacking came “a week away or whatever”, but he doesn’t recall the gory details. All that he recalls is he opted to coach on for the rest of the year when the club asked him.
“I always thought I could read the play well, so we agreed, whether it was right or wrong, I would resign the week before we played Brisbane (in Round 14)”, he said.
WHY DID I AGREE?“They said, ‘Do you want to coach on?’ and I said ‘Yeah’. I am a country boy, it never dawned on me not to.”
In hindsight, he can barely believe he agreed to coach on after learning he wouldn’t be coach the following year, while Richmond worked behind the scenes on appointing his replacement, Terry Wallace.
The club even had the audacity to ask whether Wallace — who had the job four weeks out from the season’s end — could sit in the back of the coaches’ box during the final month.
It was a request swiftly — and angrily — denied by Frawley.
“That was the toughest thing I did,” Frawley said of coaching out the last two months.
“You had to be strong for yourself, your family the club. It was a good soothing nine weeks because I sort of knew who was with me and against me.”
“I still speak to the people who took two steps back, but I really admire the guys who stood by me. They knew they were backing a loser.”
What almost broke his heart even more was the loyalty shown to him by his family, including one of his daughters who ran the school tipping competition and steadfastly refused to tip against her dad’s team.
Fifteen years on, the anger has long since subsided. He and Anita were even invited back to a Richmond function this year.
THE TIPPING POINTFrawley got on with business of life, post Richmond.
He embarked on a media career which brought him a good wage but nowhere near as much as coaching did.
That meant the family had to move — 97 steps away (he counted them out).
“That was pretty tough,” he recalled. “We had a beautiful house. We bought the block of land and we built, as Anita has a good eye for detail.
“We sold our house and there was one for sale just around the court. We bought that. It was tough for the girls who were twelve, eight and three at the time.
“They had to walk out of this (luxurious) house and go into one that was probably half as good. We had to drive past (the old one) all the time.”
The other reality check was far more personal.
As he balanced his media work (with an over-the-top personae he felt he needed to hold up to keep his job) with his role as the AFL Coaches Association chief executive, Frawley was inadvertently drawn into the AFL’s biggest scandal — Essendon’s sports supplements saga.
He wasn’t equipped to deal with the legal intricacies or the human toll that flowed from one of the darkest chapters in Australian sport.
“I would be the first to admit I had taken my eyes off the ball,” he said. “I was struggling with depression and I had no idea that I was.”
“That was a product of being on this treadmill of life and not smelling the roses, and trying to please everyone other than myself.
“I always wanted to be a premiership player, a premiership coach, always wanted to be the No.1 in the media, wanted to be a great administrator.”
The tipping point came in the MCG car park in April 2014 after working on a game with Triple M. In the darkened gloom, he sat behind the wheel of his car and cried. He couldn’t remember how to get home.
He had to ring his wife to come and pick him up.
“It was something in my psyche … all of those thing built up to a tipping point. If it wasn’t that, it was going to be something else,” he said.
“I was stubborn, I didn’t sleep for three weeks and the result was … I basically had a nervous breakdown.
“Out of that I got major depression and looking back I probably had bits of depression all the way through.”
Frawley had helped counsel other sacked coaches.
He sat in Michael Voss’ living room — with the Gabba clearly in view out the window — after the Lions’ great had been axed. He jumped a back fence with Matthew Primus to avoid the awaiting media after he had been dumped from Port Adelaide.
And he ran countless laps of the Tan with James Hird during the sports supplements scandal, all the while not knowing his own demons would come into play.
“Back in the day, (I was a) stoic farm boy, seven generations from Ireland, potato farmers,” he said.
“(It used to be) if you have an issue, grab a tissue. If you have got an ailment, work it off. If you have big one on the squirt, get up an hour earlier and work it off.
“That was the DNA.
“Manning up in the past was suffering in silence; manning up now is to put your hand up (and seek help).”
He’s done that, and is now reaping the benefits. He knows his limitations, he knows not to take on too much. He is smiling again.
For all the good that Frawley has done across a lifetime in football, what he has done in shining a light on his own mental health battles might prove just as telling in the long run — as a road map for others to navigate.
https://www.heraldsun.com.au/sport/afl/teams/richmond/danny-frawley-bravely-shares-the-story-of-his-battle-with-depression-after-richmond-sacking/news-story/ada05685a4f6158d3e907882c6331b62
