Former AFL player Sydney Stack returns to the Frownlow family after yet another off-field scandal.
The Frownlow Medal is awarded to the player whose off-field demeanour epitomises the values of the modern-day footballer and draws attention to the status of footballers as role models to young Australians. It covers Australia’s four major football codes; the National Rugby League (NRL), Australian Football League (AFL), the A-League (Football) and Rugby Union’s Super Rugby competition. NRL player Shaun Kenny-Dowall won the inaugural medal in 2015, while NRL star Manase Fainu is the most recent recipient.
The Frownlow Medal Hall of Fame honours former players and players who received media attention in previous seasons, for similarly scandalous behaviour, and its inductees include Ben Cousins and Julian O’Neill.
Stack now earns his third Frownlow nomination, this time for alleged driving offences. He has twice been nominated for the medal and is now in contention for the hall of fame.
The former Richmond player will soon face court for six driving offences, including drink driving, driving without a license and driving an unregistered vehicle, as well as two counts of driving against a red traffic light.
He was first nominated for the medal in 2020 for an incident outside a strip club. He was accused of fighting with teammate Callum Coleman-Jones outside Hollywood Showgirls on the Gold Coast in the wee hours of the morning, across the road from a police station. Reports also indicated that both players suffered facial injuries.
At the time, Richmond fans were living through strict COVID-19 lockdowns.
Also in 2020, he spent 21 days behind bars after being arrested by police in WA. After police handed him a move-on notice for disorderly conduct they realised he was supposed to be self-isolating after recently arriving from another state. Stack spent Christmas in jail and was fined $6000 in 2021 for breaching WA’s quarantine rules.
His repeated bad behaviour contributed to the loss of his AFL contract, and he is now back in WA trying to save his career.
Stack’s latest misdemeanour is sure to have caught the attention of AFL selectors, and showed them that he still has what it takes to be a first-grade player.
Image: NuNa
The Frownlow Medal 