It was supposed to be a fun night sharing footy memories and a few beers at the Railway Hotel in Yarraville on Saturday, but the Kangaroos players’ reunion ended on a sour note.
Former teammates Wayne Carey and Anthony Stevens were seen having an altercation that has been described as involving varying degrees of seriousness.
Anthony Stevens and Wayne Carey during their playing days at North Melbourne.Credit:Ken Irwin
One attendee described the run-in as a verbal exchange that did not become physical, and said the pair left amicably.
Another source confirmed there was no physical confrontation, but said there was a brief argument before the pair left the venue and got into separate Ubers with other teammates.
According to radio station SEN’s Sam Edmund, it was an “ugly altercation” that resulted in the pair being “separated”, with fellow ex-Kangaroos left “stunned”.
There have also been reports the pair shared a beer together afterwards.
Come Sunday, Stevens was a no-show for the club’s 1996 reunion parade at Marvel Stadium, where 17 players took part in a motorcade before North Melbourne’s game against Sydney.
Members of the ’96 premiership team including Carey, Glenn Archer, Dani Laidley, Corey McKernan, Mick Martyn, Wayne Schwass, David King, Anthony Rock and Brett Allison posed for a happy snap at Marvel Stadium on Sunday along with former coach Denis Pagan.
The testy exchange comes almost two decades after Carey’s affair with Stevens’ then-wife Kelli was revealed, which forced Carey, widely known as the Kangaroos’ greatest player, to leave the club for Adelaide. The pair made peace in 2016, agreeing to put the bitterness aside for the sake of their teammates. Is that peace deal now broken, or was it just, as they say, a robust exchange of views?
Stephen Jones has his eye on the super trough.Credit:Shakespeare
‘SETTING THE RECORD STRAIGHT’
The peak body for $1.6 trillion of the superannuation sector launched a media blitz this week to “set the record straight”.
Senior media manager for the Australian Institute of Superannuation Trustees Garry West on Monday emailed the editors of The Age, The Australian Financial Review, The Australian and the Herald Sun. It was in response to backlash following Assistant Treasurer Stephen Jones’ draft regulations to overhaul super laws that force disclosure of payments. Under the plan, super fund expenses will no longer be itemised, but displayed in aggregate.
Predictably, the move infuriated the super warriors, with Liberal senator Andrew Bragg quick to label the policy an attempt to hide money and union payments.
Pointy-penned columnists were justifiably sent into a spin, with the super sector among the most impenetrable players in big finance.
But in the letter, institute chief executive Eva Scheerlinck says there has been a misunderstanding. The current regime is onerous and avoiding “hundreds of individual line items” is better for accountability and member engagement.
This is a little hard to swallow following the expenses scandal at EISS Super last year, revealed by this masthead, where outrageous sums were spent on lavish parties, overseas junkets, questionable charity donations, luxury cars and non-disclosure agreements.
If there truly is a misunderstanding, West and Scheerlinck are going to have to do a better job of explaining it.
Because super funds moaning about admin burdens and confused members to justify less transparency doesn’t quite cut it.
BEN WHO?
Sydney’s favourite shock jock Ben Fordham filled the airwaves on Monday with the downside of ditching the cashless debit card and chocolate giant Mars’ apology to China after accidentally listing Taiwan as a country.
But he certainly did not write a 15-paragraph news story for The Australian detailing Foreign Minister Penny Wong’s response to China’s aggression.
For about 20 minutes, website editors at the News Corp stable got their Bens confused, when they listed Fordham as the journalist for a news story written by defence correspondent Ben Packham.
Eagle-eyed readers began emailing the paper to inquire about the mix-up. Is Fordham two-timing News and Nine? The radio star said he wasn’t aware of the byline bungle but is happy to take credit for Packham’s work, which he reads regularly.
“Can I invoice the Oz?” he texted CBD. For the salary he’s on, you’d hope the Oz editors are more careful next time. It might just be their most expensive four-letter slip up.
STUMBLE BEFORE THE SLIDE
Over the weekend, the Victorian Greens unveiled their upper house candidates for the November election.
The party sent an email to its followers, with no fewer than five links to a donation page, asking the public to chip in to “power the next Greenslide”.
It doesn’t take money from “big corporations with vested interests”, the emailed declared, and instead relies on grassroot supporters to bankroll its campaign.
So who are the candidates?
Top Google searches for four of the eight hopefuls – Bernadette Thomas, Cate Sinclair, Mat Morgan and Alex Breskin – sent visitors to a broken-link error page on the Greens website, albeit with a cute message.
“Sorry. We know how you feel – when you expect to find something and it’s just not there. And you wonder, ‘How could this have happened? Where did it go? How did we end up here? Was it apathy? Informal voting?’ ”
Breskin, who describes himself as a “system designer”, pasted the correct link to his Facebook page but failed to update Google. Unfortunately, the same cannot be said for Bendigo candidate Sinclair, whose Facebook page sports the broken link too.
“After all, to change everything, we need everyone,” the broken-link page says. Including more system designers it seems.
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