The Incredible Story of Mr O’Reilly
Background:
Once upon a sad and dreary, when Carlton and Essendon ruled the world in the late 1990’s, for reasons unbeknown to most, the fattened underbelly of Lygon Street was exposed and not necessarily for the under the table payments to a couple of their stars, but because of a twelve game Blues player who received the last known brown paper bag slung under the table at Princess Park.
This is the story of Stephen O’Reilly and the demise of the Carlton Football Club; a stranger or more tragic AFL tale will never be told.
In the 1980s and the 1990s, if you played for Carlton, you were a rock star playing football on the weekends and playing up between times.
Certified Rock Stars!
This was the time when the Blues were untouchable both on and off the field and no matter the indiscretion, the only caveat on the players was bringing regular Premierships to the club, which they did.
Premierships in 1979, 1981, 1982, 1987 and 1995 bore testament to a club that expected success. And that success was delivered, with a ruthless boardroom that never allowed the rot to set in. Coaches and players were recruited and sacked with a stroke of the pen, scant regard given to sentiment and other impediments that held other clubs back.
And then suddenly in 1999 and 2000, it all unravelled. The Blues went from being one of the most feared clubs in the competition in 2000 to a laughingstock by the end of the 2002 season.
Apart from the new millennium arriving in 2001, what else changed at Princess/Visy/Optus/Ikon Park thereafter?
Not much.
They say pride cometh before the fall, but in the case of Carlton, arrogance came before the fall as the Blues tried to hold onto their own old ways of doing things, including the mythical under the table brown paper bag payments to certain players.
In 2000, the world of the AFL had changed,. However, the Blues Board, which was by now so last century, paid scant regard to the new era of professionalism that encapsulated the AFL horizon.
Books had to be balanced, accountability at both a board-and-player-level now had meaning. Players couldn’t play up like the old days, and, some would say sadly, the days of the rock star AFL player running amok were over.
Bad Trades and Recruiting Exercises
The new millennium was not kind to Carlton, but there is one trade, which on paper wasn’t the worst trade of all time, that would split the Blues wide open to such an extent they would still be bleeding out for a long time thereafter.
Think of the worst overrated trade your club had bargained for and then breathe a sigh of relief when I tell you it pales into insignificance when compared to the Blues recruitment of Stephen O’Reilly.
Just for the record, Stephen O’Reilly was a handy type of player with 134 AFL games (36 at Geelong and 98 at Fremantle) under his belt before he was recruited by the Blues for the 2000 season.
On paper, O’Reilly was a handy pickup by the Blues as a player, and even though he only played 12 games for the club (he had a recurring back complaint), at the time it was seen as a prudent selection to bolster a team which seemed on the verge of another successful era.
The problem with Stephen O’Reilly was not his player credentials, but rather the deal done to get him to the club. Mr O’Reilly was paid well overs by the Blues, with some of his contract being paid under the table.
In 2002 the urban myth of the ‘Lygon Street Brown Paper Bags’ had finally been exposed, and the nickname of the Baggers confirmed.
It would not have surprised any reasonable AFL supporter at the time that Craig Bradley and Stephen Silvagni were receiving shifty third party payments at the time, and an exception could also be made for the heart and soul clubman, Fraser Brown, getting a couple of bucks extra, but it was the third party payments to Stephen O’Reilly which was the straw that broke the Carlton’s back at the end of the 2002 season, and it had everybody in the AFL asking why?
Why would Carlton pay Stephen O’Reilly under the table?
O’Reilly was a handy recruit yes, but he was not a make-or-break style of player.
Jack Dyer would have described O’Reilly as, a good ordinary player.
Carlton’s greed had finally caught up with them, and the penalties handed out to the club were crushing to say the least.
A $930,000 penalty, including $57,576 (1995) suspended from a previous breach. Think about that, $57,576 from a previous breach, I mean it is not like they weren’t warned.
Carlton were well and truly warned, and unlike the Essendon team of the late 1990’s which suffered a similar fate (including draft restrictions) they had on field talent to burn. On the other hand, Carlton were coming off their first wooden spoon in the history of the club and the combined penalty of the fine and draft retractions would see them bottom out until the Pratt family took over the running of the club in 2007.
In the 2002 National Draft, Carlton lost their first and second round picks and they were barred from trading back into the draft to strengthen their position, with similar restrictions for the 2003 National Draft. For a club that had just had the worst season in their history, the loss of draft picks gutted the once mighty club.
The mighty Blues had fallen and there wasn’t much sympathy, or even empathy, coming the Blues way from outside the club, with then AFL Chief Executive Wayne Jackson stating, Carlton “deserved everything they got, and arguably, some more…”
It would be fair to say there was a lot of people dancing on the corpse of the once mighty Baggers.
In the fallout, John Elliott was ousted and the stand named after him was renamed The Legends Stand.
The question of why Stephen O’Reilly remains?
If I was reading between the lines and surmising, the payments to Bradley, Silvagni and Brown may have been a leftover legacy of the 1995 salary cap breaches and may have been allowed to silently fly under the radar until fruition, but the sheer arrogance of the John Elliott-led Board to continue such practices after 1995 is unbelievable, and why O’Reilly?
As stated already, the recruitment of Stephen O’Reilly is far from being the worst trade of all time, and if it was not for his role in the salary-cap infringements of 2002, then Mr O’Reilly would be just another footnote in the history of the Blues, but Carton couldn’t help being Carlton.
The contract Mr O’Reilly agreed to is the worst underhanded, third-party payments contract in AFL history, which in turn makes the O’Reilly trade the worst in AFL history because of the aftermath.
O’Reilly did not destroy the Blues; he is just the last known Carlton player to be paid under the table in a long line of players dating back to who knows when? Seriously, when did it start, in the 1960’s or later? Nobody really knows and those who do know aren’t talking.
Jack Elliott and his band of arrogant cronies destroyed the Carlton Football Club by their old school constructs which had no place any longer in the AFL at the turn of the century. The ramifications of Carlton’s player payment practices exposure in 2002 are still being felt to this day.
Once Were Carlton
Putting aside Carlton’s shady dealings in the 1970’s, 1980’s and 1990’s, Carlton were the envy of the other clubs, and as is the tradition, hated for being so successful. The Blues Institution had an inbuilt competitive edge, but when the walls came tumbling down, the culture and the very ‘X’ factor essence of their success all but disappeared.
To blame Bradley, Silvagni, Brown, and Mr O’Reilly is a lazy cop out, insomuch as it is to still be blaming Jack Elliott and his cronies so many years later.
With the club collapsing so dramatically in 2002 it was obvious they had to reboot and change the way they operated (to wit they are still struggling with at a Board level), and it could be argued they also threw the ‘baby out with the bath water’.
Other clubs have survived complete and total on and off field decimations in the past only to rise again with a stronger resolve and grit to succeed.
It is not an exaggeration to say the Sydney Swans of 1989 to 1993 were probably the most bankrupt team in every area of their club, however, from their darkest days they built a structure and culture which still stands strong to this day. Lead by the players on the field, especially Paul Kelly and then Brett Kirk, the Swans went back to their own past and revived the ‘Bloods Culture’, and the rest of the club followed their lead.
Carlton needs to rediscover their old self, minus the shenanigans of a dishonest Board, and follow the lead of the Swans, the Bulldogs (2016), the Richmond era (2017-2020) and the Demons of the early 2020’s. Sydney, Western Bulldogs, Richmond and Melbourne all revived their cultures to achieve success.
The essence of Lachie Neale’s words before the 2024 Grand Final have stuck in mind ever since when he expressed the sentiment of being able to look the great Lions players of 2001 to 2003 in their eyes and know he belonged. Neale’s words were a statement of intent to not just be a good team, but a great team equal to the past teams, and it speaks volumes of the culture of this modern-day reincarnation of the Lions.
Carlton has a multitude of examples to follow, but they still need to rediscover their own DNA.
In the 1990’s the Cats had the unflattering moniker (and now politically incorrect) of the Handbag Kids, and unsurprisingly, each time they faltered the ill-gotten nickname got louder with it being the death knell signature of the 1989 to 1995 Cats. It wasn’t until a major point of identity crisis at the end of the 2006 season that the Geelong Football Club put the ‘handbag’ reputation to rest in 2007, and they did it in emphatic style.
Sadly, for the Blues, even their own supporters have embraced the term ‘the brown paper bag’ team. There are many implications that can be drawn from this nickname, with the most obvious being a negative throw back to their days of hedonistic under the table transactions known as the Lygon Street brown paper bags.
Carlton pre-2000 was one arrogant hell of a team, with a sense of one in, all in. Each player had the back of their teammates. I hated them, but as a unit they were bigger than the game and they were ‘Bloody Awesome’ – they had an indescribable and impenetrable ‘X’ factor about the way they went about it all.
There is much to admire about the Carlton teams of the 1960’s through to the turn of the century, and it was more than just ‘brown paper bags’, they were just freakishly good, and everybody knew it.
Somewhere between the 1960’s to the turn of century is Carlton’s forgotten DNA and after 30 years without any success and a lot of controversy, maybe, just maybe, Carlton’s future success is a process of reflection and rediscovering the great Blues culture of years past.
Mr O’Reilly is not the worst trade of all-time (far from it), but rather his recruitment was the straw that burst the Blues wide open. However, that was then and this now, and maybe it is time the Carlton Football Club to stop acting like Basil Fawlty and rediscover the ‘ol’ dark navy Blues’ DNA within again.
Footnote: At the time of writing a deal involving Charlie Curnow is yet to be finalised with the Swans, however, the ghosts of Blues past would be demanding Heeney or Gulden in return, and if they didn’t get either, then bad luck. If Charlie isn’t happy, then they would have played him in the reserves for all of next season. It was the old Carlton way!
