Daryn Cresswell's sporting shame transcript

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COMMENTATOR: Daryn Cresswell from 35 metres. Drop punt for goal, he's kicked it! The Swans have won! What a game of football!

Daryn Cresswell: You're never going to look forward or go forward unless you start owning up to your mistakes.

COMMENTATOR: Oh, what a mark, Daryn Cresswell!

Daryn Cresswell: Jail's been good for me, it's given me a lot of time to reflect and a lot of time to...take ownership of the carnage I've made.

ROSS COULTHART: Daryn Cresswell now runs to control the gambling addiction that destroyed his life. Eight years ago, he was one of the Sydney Swans' players of the century. Today, there's a long line of angry friends, family and creditors in his wake.

COMMENTATOR: We have a serious situation with the unfortunate Daryn Cresswell.

ROSS COULTHART: How much do you think you lost, all told?

Daryn Cresswell: Ah, close to $1 million.

ROSS COULTHART: So you've lost all your houses?

Daryn Cresswell: Everything.

ROSS COULTHART: You've lost your family?

Daryn Cresswell: Everything.

ROSS COULTHART: Two weekends ago, he walked out of a Queensland jail after serving 10 months for defrauding a bank to fuel his compulsive gambling. Waiting for him was his girlfriend, Jo. Now that he's out, he wants to speak out - about gambling and sport.

Daryn Cresswell: Gambling's a huge problem. I just don't think it should be allowed.

ROSS COULTHART: And there are a lot of players doing it?

Daryn Cresswell: I've known of players doing it, I have.

ROSS COULTHART: Did you ever gamble on your own games?

Daryn Cresswell: Once.

ROSS COULTHART: Did you make money out of it?

Cresswell: Yep.

COMMENTATOR: With 1 minute, 20 seconds remaining...Oh, what a mark! Daryn Cresswell! Inside 50, a mark. Daryn Cresswell. Outplayed by Daryn Cresswell. Daryn Cresswell steadies. It's a high kick. He's there!

ROSS COULTHART: Over 11 years with the Swans, Daryn Cresswell forged a formidable reputation.

COMMENTATOR: Daryn Cresswell, from 35m. He comes in, deliberately. Drop for goal. He's kicked it! The Swans have won! What a game of football! The Swans have won by three points!

ROSS COULTHART: His physical toughness was legendary, especially during one notable game where he rammed a dislocated kneecap back into place.

COMMENTATOR: He's trying to put his knee in, Cresswell. Look at him banging his knee. Look.

ROSS COULTHART: But from childhood, his life off the field was tougher. I can't think of any other prominent person who's had such tragedy in his family life. You had a brother, Scott, who was drowned at five. You had another brother, Bradley, who died from cot death. 2006, there was a third brother, Paul, who died from an illness. And then your dad, he was drowned.

Daryn Cresswell: Yeah, I lost my way a bit when I lost my dad...

ROSS COULTHART: From the outside, though, it looked to all like he had the perfect life. That same year, he'd married Donna, his teenage sweetheart. Children came, his career took off and the money was rolling in.

COMMENTATOR: He's kicked it very, very well. It's a goal.

Donna: The money was good, we were doing well. We were travelling a lot.
It was a fairytale.

ROSS COULTHART: So you were building up quite a healthy property portfolio?

Donna: That's right.

ROSS COULTHART: And there was every prospect of a long, happy, wealthy life together?

Donna: We were hoping, basically, to set ourselves up for the future.

ROSS COULTHART: When did the gambling first start?

Daryn Cresswell: End of 2002.

ROSS COULTHART: How did you get into it?

Daryn Cresswell: I actually bought a car, BMW, through a former jockey, well, he's still a jockey who I knew quite well.

ROSS COULTHART: Who was that?

Daryn Cresswell: Darren Beadman.

ROSS COULTHART: The champion jockey invited Cresswell to the races. And Daryn's first bet was a big win - a $200 punt paid him $12,000. Tell me about that first bet.

Daryn Cresswell: It was at Canterbury one Thursday night. Two horses,
the first one paid $5.50 and got up and the second one in photo and paid $11 - $11,500, $12,000 out of $200 was the first bet I put on.

ROSS COULTHART: From that moment, Daryn was hooked. At this time, you were a very wealthy man, weren't you?

Daryn Cresswell: Yeah.

ROSS COULTHART: What sort of assets did you have? How much money did you have?

Daryn Cresswell: At this stage, I had a $1.7 million property on the water in Hawthorn. In Brisbane. And I had two properties on the Sunshine Coast.

ROSS COULTHART: In 2003, Daryn retired as a player but stayed in the game as an assistant coach at various clubs.

Daryn Cresswell: I didn't have that...adrenaline rush of playing footy
and I was a pretty lonely person, to be honest.

ROSS COULTHART: Why did Daryn gamble?

Donna Cresswell: When he finished footy, he wasn't getting the big footy salaries. So he basically thought it was a quick dollar and it got him in. I always said to Daryn he's physically fit and strong but mentally weak.

ROSS COULTHART: Talk me through a typical day.

Daryn Cresswell: A typical day would be - buy the paper, straight to the form guide. Make a few phone calls to see if there's any tips running around and basically get it on the internet at work and start looking
at the fields, prices and start betting pretty much all day.

ROSS COULTHART: What size bets?

Daryn Cresswell: Oh, Ross, anywhere from $1,000 to $20,000 on a horse.

ROSS COULTHART: You were making $20,000 bets?

Daryn Cresswell: Yeah.

ROSS COULTHART: And when you were doing that, were you conscious that, "This is just insane?"

Daryn Cresswell: No, I wasn't. I was... My thought process was just clouded by winning and betting. Nothing else come in to the equation whatsoever.

Donna Cresswell: We basically didn't exist, the children didn't exist, I didn't exist. Daryn's life revolved around gambling.

ROSS COULTHART: How much did you gamble?

Daryn Cresswell: I had a good think about this the other day. When you're in jail for 10 months, you think about a lot of things, and I would have gambled... I would have lost $1 million.

ROSS COULTHART: A million dollars.

Daryn Cresswell: No question. When you can't meet obligations - house repayments, child care, car payments - you realise, "I'm in pretty deep here, "how am I going to get out of this?"

ROSS COULTHART: He kept betting in the desperate hope he'd win enough to bail himself out. And every step of the way, Daryn was funded by ever-obliging bookies. Do you think bookies were giving your husband credit to gamble...

Donna Cresswell: Of course. ..when they knew he was addicted to gambling?
Of course. They don't care. They don't care that...it's ruining a family's life, they don't care. As long as they are getting him to make that bet, they don't care.

ROSS COULTHART: What's going on in your head there? Why do you keep on gambling?

Daryn Cresswell: (SIGHS) It's not real money, mate. Like, to be honest, when you're betting with bookies and that, it's plastic money. It's not money, it's not cash, like, you're handing over, it's just a figure,
it's just numbers. Everything I had, I was trying to win back to pay people that I owed to try and pay...the rent, try and pay the cars, try and pay for the kids' education. And in the end, Ross, I...two attempts to try end it all.

ROSS COULTHART: You actually tried to kill yourself?

Daryn Cresswell: Twice.

ROSS COULTHART: What happened?

Daryn Cresswell: I just took a heap of tablets and poison that one day and made myself pretty ill.

ROSS COULTHART: Who found you?

Daryn Cresswell: No, I was just by myself. I just woke up really sick
and vomiting and headachey and just pretty much in a bad way. And one other time I went for a run, one of the main highways of Tasmania and I was just going to jump in front of a car. Only thing that stopped me
was the kids.

ROSS COULTHART: Did you ever talk to your wife about it?

Daryn Cresswell: Nup.

ROSS COULTHART: What could have helped Daryn?

Donna Cresswell: If he wasn't allowed to get credit in advance, Daryn wouldn't have got to the stage where he was out of control.

ROSS COULTHART: For a long time, Donna didn't know - Daryn didn't tell - then she started finding letters of demand hidden in cupboards, bookies banging on the door and bank statements that made no sense.

ROSS COULTHART: I mean, this is frightening. You've got a...you can see over a period of months here, your mortgage goes from...At one stage, you are doing really, really well and then all of a sudden you are hundreds of thousands and then millions in the red. I think you told me you had to go and get food parcels from the Salvos once.

Donna Cresswell: Yeah, I did.

ROSS COULTHART: Did that feel humiliating?

Donna Cresswell: Of course. Of course.

ROSS COULTHART: And this is all because of gambling?

Donna Cresswell: Exactly.

ROSS COULTHART: In 2008, with debt consuming their lives, Daryn quit his job and took off. Without telling Donna, he bolted to London with another woman — Joanne Foster, who's now his partner.

Donna Cresswell: One day he was there. Next day, he was gone. What sort of father does that to their children?

Daryn Cresswell: Pretty embarrassed about that. It was a shameful thing I did. Walked out on my family. But to be honest, Ross, when I got to England, I could breathe again. There was no gambling, I could walk down the street, not thinking people are looking at me. I felt alive again, to be honest. I just felt I could breathe properly.

ROSS COULTHART: But Daryn's mounting debts were suffocating and back here in Australia, police were investigating. When Daryn returned from overseas, he was in the frame for criminal fraud. A fellow gambler owed him money and offered to re-mortgage his house to repay the debt. He asked Cresswell to sign the loan documents on his behalf. What did you think you'd signed?

Daryn Cresswell: I'd signed my mate's signature on his property that he owned that he told me I could sign. That's what I thought I was doing.

ROSS COULTHART: But he lied to you.

Daryn Cresswell: That's correct.

ROSS COULTHART: What had he done?

Daryn Cresswell: Well, it wasn't his property.

ROSS COULTHART: Did you know he was doing that?

Daryn Cresswell: No. Not at all.

ROSS COULTHART: But you did do something very bad, didn't you?

Daryn Cresswell: I signed his name.

ROSS COULTHART: So there were two loans that you put someone else's signature on?

Daryn Cresswell: Correct.

ROSS COULTHART: In 2005, I think it was $80,000.

Daryn Cresswell: Yep.

ROSS COULTHART: In 2006, in was $240,000.

Daryn Cresswell: Yep.

ROSS COULTHART: Now, that's a lot of money. Where did it go?

Daryn Cresswell: To the betting agencies.

ROSS COULTHART: You gambled it?

Daryn Cresswell: Gambled it.

ROSS COULTHART: A lot of people watching this who don't have a gambling addiction, Daryn, will be thinking, "He's crazy. Why didn't he just stop?"

Daryn Cresswell: I couldn't, I couldn't. I just... It was an everyday thing, I was like an alcoholic. I couldn't stop, I didn't understand what I was doing but I was just doing it and I was just completely out of control. I couldn't stop.

ROSS COULTHART: On July 7, 2009, Daryn Cresswell was arrested and extradited from Sydney to Brisbane. In December last year, he was
sentenced to three years jail, 10 months non-parole. Gambling had cost him everything.

Donna Cresswell: Daryn was a very selfish person.

ROSS COULTHART: He says he's very ashamed of what he's done.

Donna Cresswell: I don't think he could be ashamed enough.

ROSS COULTHART: And when you heard he'd gone to jail, what was your response?

Donna Cresswell: It's all over, that's a relief. Everything's out there, nothing can hurt us anymore.

ROSS COULTHART: Daryn, I should actually say if I ask you this question, if it's a positive one, you have to acknowledge that it's an offence to do it but did you ever gamble on your own games?

Daryn Cresswell: Once.

ROSS COULTHART: Did you make money out of it?

Daryn Cresswell: Yep.

ROSS COULTHART: You realise what you're admitting there, don't you?

COMMENTATOR: It's Round 1 action, Sydney and Carlton from Telstra Stadium.

ROSS COULTHART: The match Daryn Cresswell bet on was a Swans game against Carlton in 2003. He bet on a Swans win.

Daryn Cresswell: It was just a win bet. It was a small wager, it wasn't a large one. It was $200.

ROSS COULTHART: Does that sort of thing go on a lot?

Daryn Cresswell: I reckon it does. Looking back, obviously, it was a stupid thing to do.

ROSS COULTHART: In July, after betting his captain would kick the first goal against Adelaide, Collingwood defender Heath Shaw was suspended.

Heath Shaw: I haven't got a gambling problem. Like I said, it was just a naive and stupid thing at the time.

ROSS COULTHART: Last month, after placing several bets on his own team and lying when confronted, Essendon assistant coach Dean Wallis was suspended.

COMMENTATOR: Are you disappointed with the result?

ROSS COULTHART: 10 days ago Canterbury rugby league forward Ryan Tandy was criminally convicted. He's brought down by Ennis and also Tandy.
Ugly looking tackle. Tandy deliberately gave away a penalty in the first minutes of this game. His alleged syndicate, seen here on CCTV, stood to win over $100,000 if the North Queensland Cowboys kicked the first points
from a penalty goal.

COMMENTATOR: And the penalty comes right in front of the posts.

ROSS COULTHART: There's been a rash of allegations on players gambling on their own game, most recently Ryan Tandy. Is it a problem?

Michael Sullivan: We don't believe it is because we believe we've got a very good system in place to detect that and I think that Ryan Tandy just proves that the system is working.

ROSS COULTHART: Michael Sullivan, one of Australia's biggest bookies, CEO of two of Australia's biggest betting agencies - Sportingbet and Centrebet. Sullivan sponsors six league teams and two AFL teams. But even he feels the way betting is being spruiked in big television games is too much.

COMMENTATOR: On TAB Sportsbet, it is the Sea Eagles, $1.47...
It's called integrated betting. Courtesy of that late try, Manly now into $1.12 to win the Grand Final of 2011. Betting dressed up as commentary.

Michael Sullivan: Quite frankly, I think there might have been a line crossed here. And as a matter of fact, my company has made a legitimate decision not to get involved in that sort of advertising of the odds.

ROSS COULTHART: Why?

Michael Sullivan: Well, because I just think it's enough - it's just too much in your face, especially when you consider you are in a situation where there are kids under 18 watching the games.

ROSS COULTHART: The temptation to bet has never been greater - not just for players, but for all of us. Gambling has gone mainstream on the small screen.

Nick Xenophon: Gambling advertising, particularly sports betting, is in your face, it's everywhere. There's something really wrong when a 7-year-old can quote you the odds for a game rather than play statistics.

ROSS COULTHART: Australians like a punt. But Nick Xenophon believes we've gone too far. Aren't you being just a bit of a wowser? People like a flutter.

Nick Xenophon: Look, sure, people like to flutter but people also don't like losing their homes, losing their families, losing everything they have because of a gambling addiction.

Donna Cresswell's life is now a 10-hour working day while also raising
three young children. They live in a rented house and rely on Centrelink benefits.

ROSS COULTHART: So how do you feel about gambling?

Donna Cresswell: I hate it. Like I said, I know where hell is. I've been there.

ROSS COULTHART: What are your feelings towards Daryn?

Donna Cresswell: There isn't any. It's over? It's over.

ROSS COULTHART: For Daryn Cresswell, it's a fresh start with his new partner, Jo. We caught up with him and a few of his mates on AFL Grand Final day. So who controls the bank accounts, Daryn?

Daryn Cresswell: Joanne. I've got no access to any of the bank accounts or credit cards or anything.

ROSS COULTHART: Ron Barassi once called you the 'Miracle Man'. It's going to be a miracle, isn't it, if you can control this addiction. Do you think you can do it?

Daryn Cresswell: I can do it. I've got too much to live for now.
I've got three beautiful kids, I've got a wonderful partner. I can do it, I'm determined to do it and I will do it.

ROSS COULTHART: Well, good luck.

Daryn Cresswell: Thanks, mate.