Almanac Life: Jacko & Lenny

 

by Tom Cranitch

 

Tom has been part of the Almanac community for many years. This article about his brother Lenny, and an incident at Lang Park in Brisbane, contains strong references to sexual abuse, drug abuse and depression. This is a confronting story, but a story which Lenny and Tom want told. The details have been verified by Lenny, and appear with his full knowledge and approval. As is routine in these matters, the facts in the article have been checked against the public record and are accurate.

 

It was the mid-1980s and I was with one of my older brothers, Lenny, watching our Brisbane Rugby League (BRL) team, Brothers, play a round match against the well-fancied Souths from the outer at Lang Park. Neither the ground nor our location were strangers to me, I had been coming to the home of rugby league in Queensland multiple times each season for much of the previous decade and while I preferred to sit in the Frank Burke Stand, Lenny had a preference for the outer where a robust illegal betting ring operated with odds proffered and accepted on anything even remotely related to the match. Lenny was a gambler and liked a punt.

Brothers meant the world to our family. Sure, they were our footy team but as the Catholic club in both a competition and a society with lingering remnants of sectarianism, the club’s progress had wider ramifications. It was a form of tribalism that transcended a simple sporting contest. It was more than just Lenny’s money that rode on matches.

Mid-way into the first half, the contest was evenly poised and Lenny, a bundle of nerves as was his want on the punt, seized the opportunity to inject himself into the match. Rising to his feet and while the play was directly before our halfway location, he released his booming voice into a tirade against Souths emerging backline star, Peter “Jacko” Jackson. “Get off the field Jackson, you fucking mug lair,” he bellowed. Hearing a pin drop at a football match is an impossibility, but whatever universal forces aligned at the time to bring about the eerie silence that befell the ground the moment that comment was made, I cannot explain. My brother’s voice could strip paint, that was true, and some people may even have rightly suggested that anger was never far from his surface, but this was different. Suddenly thousands of eyes were upon us as the source of the heckling, even the play, momentarily halted. Jacko, not at the time in the frontline of the play, stopped dead, zeroed his gaze in on our location and with a combination of words, finger pointing and hardline gesticulating let his feelings flow towards Lenny. His exact words were inaudible but it was a response more than worthy of the spray he had received.

Reflecting on the incident nearly forty years later, several thoughts come to mind. Obviously crowd abuse of players has been rightly toned down and Lenny’s outburst would likely result in his eviction from the ground in today’s world. But looking beyond that changed societal standard, I am struck by the similarities between Jacko and Lenny, and how both used rugby league, and other addictive behaviours, to mask deeper evils lurking in their interiors. You see, this was not just the case of a foul, loud-mouthed spectator abusing an athlete but rather was a sliding-doors, paradigm moment intersecting the lives of two people with more in common than could have been appreciated at the time. Perhaps that is why it stood still that day at Lang Park.

When Lenny was on the verge of his twelfth birthday he was brutally raped by one of the priests at our family’s Brisbane Catholic parish. Lured by the offender to assist in cleaning the parish bus after its return from a swimming trip, Lenny’s life changed forever on the ground floor of a church building which should have been his spiritual sanctuary, not his lingering torment.

Feelings of shame, guilt and anger have been Lenny’s companions for the past 50-odd years, they were certainly outed in his comment that day at Lang Park. What was not appreciated by Lenny, was that Jacko, younger by only a handful of years, was dealing with similar feelings as a result of being a victim of a pedophile teacher who preyed upon him during his secondary school years.

Jacko was one of the colourful characters of rugby league in the 1980s and 1990s, starring in the BRL competition before progressing to seasons with the Canberra Raiders, Brisbane Broncos and the North Sydney Bears. He was a key fixture in the Queensland Origin teams of the era and played nine Tests for Australia. His achievements in the game and his public persona as a lovable larrikin were well matched for his emerging post-football media career before his untimely death of a heroin overdose in a Sydney hotel room at the age of 33 in 1997.

Jacko was sexually abused by his former 1st XV football coach at The Southport School, Oswald “Ossie” McNamara, a former Marist Brother who had left the religious order and its flagship school, St Joseph’s College, Hunters Hill in Sydney, after earlier instances of sexual impropriety with schoolboys had emerged. He was sojourning as a lay teacher at Jacko’s Gold Coast school before being re-employed by the Marist Brothers at their college in Ashgrove in Brisbane.

I was a student at Marist Ashgrove at that time where “Ossie” was well-known for his predilection for the use of the cane on the backsides and hands of boys and for teaching maths to struggling students. Thankfully my B grades in the subject kept me out of his classes, but I did have more involvement with him several years later when we were both Boarding Supervisors at the College. Short in stature and somewhat socially awkward, Ossie’s domain was school life and his gruffness and enthusiasm for corporal punishment were viewed as throwbacks to his “old-school” approach.

Oddly, in light of the subsequent revelations, I recall seeing Jacko attending training sessions for the Marist Ashgrove 1st XV in 1989, assisting Ossie who was by then coaching the team. One wonders what must have been compelling Jacko to help out his abuser. Whether it be misguided loyalty, guilt or a sense of shame, literally, only God does know. What is clear is the turmoil Ossie unleashed on Jacko’s life remained a torment that neither a loving family nor a successful sporting and media career could any longer disguise. His slide into alcohol and drug misuse mirrored the ride of countless other abuse victims.

Lenny too was on that journey. A decade long career in the same police force which once housed Jacko, was an ill-suited attempt to provide some certainty to his life, and it petered out with more war stories and an unemployment line. The truth was, he was unemployable as his battle against the demons was still in its infancy. It would take decades for him to find some inner peace once the Royal Commission de-stigmatised his brutalisation and allowed a healing process to commence.

Our Mother’s funeral a handful of years ago saw him make a brief return to a Catholic Church which was ultimately responsible for the succour and protection it afforded his abuser. A short time later, I sat with Lenny across the “negotiating” table from the Church’s lawyers in their Brisbane riverside office. Their apology on behalf of their client was hollow in view of the subsequent “take it or leave it” settlement offer. Power and domination were still the Church’s approach to Lenny. The punter in him took the paltry cash offer in the hope of a better tomorrow – the mirage of the universal gambler.

Yet Lenny lives, and to me stands as a defective beacon of the triumph of the human spirit – forever tarnished, but undefeated. Rugby league is still his passion, with the Melbourne Storm his vehicle.

Ossie and Brisbane Brothers RLFC experienced their own separate, tragic deaths. One alone after a term of incarceration where I suspect he would have struggled with what his faith and the system had meted out to him. He too was a victim of a flawed view of Christianity, of the muscular and remote kind. The other was killed off by mismanagement and the growing irrelevance of tribalism in a post-belief society, though lives eternally in the hearts and minds of its generations of players and supporters – its legacy secured.

Lang Park has been the host of numerous momentous events. Some may even argue it has a certain mystical aura for Queenslanders which transcends football. I cannot evidence that view, but I do know the wounded spirits of Jacko and Lenny connected on that day many years ago. I like to think they were reaching towards one another for a solace to heal their brokenness.

 

Lifeline  is a free and confidential support service which can be reached on 13 11 14.

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Our writers are independent contributors. The opinions expressed in their articles are their own. They are not the views, nor do they reflect the views, of Malarkey Publications.

 

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