Former AFL player Jonathan Hay has made the shocking revelation that he took illicit drugs in order to earn a spot in The Fronwlow Medal Hall of Fame.
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.
Hay said he would help himself to whatever he wanted while playing for Hawthorn and North Melbourne in the late 90s and early 2000s and that he thought about Frownlow glory every time.
In an interview after retiring from the AFL, Hay said he would raid the medicine cabinet at Hawthorn and admitted that he was a drug addict trying to deal with the pressure of professional sport and a stalker.
Hay said that a man stalked him for five years. He would stare through Hay’s window at 4am and send anonymous men sourced from gay websites to his house.
The Hawks apparently had a cabinet in the doctor’s room full of valium and sleeping tablets and this made it much easier for Hay to earn his hall of fame nomination.
“I could walk in there and it was never locked. I don’t blame Hawthorn but I would go in and help myself to whatever I wanted. My drug use was daily. I would get through training and it would be like a reward to myself, I would get off my face with sleeping tablets and valium,” he confessed.
“That went on for a couple of years and then I went doctor shopping. I understood the lingo of what to say and I had the doctors fooled. And they were giving me what I wanted and that’s when I got my hands on endone and morphine and more valium.
It was getting out of control. On the weekends I would take recreational drugs. Cocaine and ecstasy but whatever I could get my hands on to change my mind so I didn’t have to worry about my stalker, not performing from footy, taking me away from it.”
“I definitely had drugs of choice but I would take anything to get off my face.”
Hay can certainly get off his face at the awards night for The Frownlow Medal and The Frownlow Medal Hall of Fame to be held later this year, and he won’t be the only one.
Image: NuNa
The Frownlow Medal 