The late Victor Spinks showed today’s footballers how to earn a nomination for The Frownlow Medal Hall of Fame.
The former rugby league player succumbed to gambling, drug addiction, drug importation and race fixing and served time in prison before passing away at age 76.
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 Talatau Amone 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.
Spinks played centre and backrow for Balmain Tigers and Newtown Jets and is most famous for engineering a $225 million hashish shipment while also being involved in the Jockey Tapes scandal. He was described as the controlling mind of the group which arranged for 15 tonnes of cannabis resin to be shipped from Pakistan to Australia in 1994, worth about $225 million.
The shipment almost made it to Australia but ran aground near Hervey Bay in southern Queensland, while another 10 tonnes were dumped at sea.
When police arrested Spinks, they also seized 11 of his properties and $1 million from a bank account, so business was obviously good. He could have spent 16 years in prison but had it reduced to 6.5 years.
That was not all.
Spinks was first convicted of breaking and entering in 1960 and later with the nabbing of $54,000 from a mailbag in the 1970s. The same decade, the Woodward Royal Commission heard evidence that linked him to the heroin trade, and he later achieved infamy for trying to fix horse races.
Spinks was identified as Mr C in police phone taps attempting to arrange the outcome of horse races in Sydney.
Thank goodness there was no social media back in those day.
Spinks was released from prison in 2002 and tried to access half a million dollars he had put in a Swiss bank account in 1987, but suspicion was raised when guards identified his false passport. He managed to eventually get the money, but some years later his body was found in a hotel near Sydney’s Central Station, his death likely caused by a drug overdose.
Players will smoke a tribute to Spinks at the awards night for The Frownlow Medal and The Frownlow Medal Hall of Fame.
Image: NuNa
The Frownlow Medal 