Why the Tigers wrapped their arms around troubled star Marlion Pickett

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The AFL knew before Marlion Pickett did that the police wanted to speak to the Richmond player about aggravated burglaries in Perth last summer.

The league was contacted on Wednesday last week by Perth’s Midland Police saying they wanted to speak to a Richmond player, Marlion Pickett.

Marlion Pickett is embraced by Tiger teammates after their premiership victory in 2019.Credit: Getty Images

Former homicide squad detective and Carlton reserves player Tony Keane, of the AFL’s integrity department, took the call and referred police to the Tigers.

The club spoke with Pickett, 31, and the player’s Perth-based manager, Anthony Van Der Wielen, to alert them to the approach.

The police were aware Richmond were playing in Perth and were keen to talk to Pickett while he was there. The police didn’t mind if he came in on Friday or played the game on Saturday night and came in on Sunday.

No problem. They agreed he’d play against the Fremantle Dockers, and meet with police on Sunday.

At no point did Pickett, Van Der Wielen, Richmond officials or Pickett’s lawyer, David Manera, anticipate when they walked into Midland Police station that Pickett wouldn’t be walking out with them.

Pickett’s is the ultimate redemption story, of an Indigenous man with a challenging background who rebuilt his life and played in a premiership in his first AFL game. Last Sunday night, the fairytale threatened to unravel.

This masthead has spoken to senior people at Richmond and close to Pickett, who were not comfortable speaking publicly for privacy reasons and because his case is before the courts, to reconstruct the events of last weekend, and understand why the Tigers wrapped their arms around him.

By the time Pickett met with police, his long-term partner and the couple’s four children aged between six and 13, had already boarded a flight home to Melbourne. There had been no reason to doubt Pickett would be following soon afterwards.

The key leaders at Richmond – the CEO, head of football and acting senior coach – knew about the police meeting, but the players weren’t told for the simple reason there was no reason to. The fact Marlion wasn’t on the plane with them was not a surprise, for other WA-based players had stayed an extra night in Perth to see their families.

The police questioned Pickett over a spate of aggravated burglaries in Perth over the Christmas period when he had been visiting family and recovering from surgery to repair a hand he had broken in training in November.

That Sunday night, police charged Pickett with four counts of aggravated burglary and commit, four counts of stealing, three counts of criminal damage or destruction of property and one count of receiving. He was remanded in the cells for the night before he could appear before a magistrate the next morning to apply for bail.

Richmond’s star forward Jack Riewoldt said this week that the players knew nothing of this until they received a text from the club to join an online meeting. They logged in and were told the news.

“It was a shock from when we were called to a meeting late Sunday night,” Riewoldt told AFL 360.

“It was sort of [one of] those ones where you get the meeting request come in and say we’re meeting in five minutes. “You go, ‘All right, something’s happened, certainly not good.’

“So certainly it’s shocked a lot of people. Especially our Indigenous players at our football club who see Marlion as an older brother.

“There’s a lot of water to go under the bridge for us and making sure our group is right and making sure Marlion and his family is right as well.”

Pickett is a loved figure at Richmond. His deep empathy for other players meant many in the group became upset when they learned where he was. They didn’t have any detail of the allegations against him, but the visceral response of those who knew him was disbelief.

Everyone is entitled to the presumption of innocence, and when it is someone you know, love and trust that presumption is even stronger. In Pickett’s case their understanding of who he was and where he had come from to turn his life around to make it at football’s top level only deepened their sense of shock.

Richmond CEO Brendon Gale admitted to his shock at the charges for he understood the challenges Pickett had confronted in his life. He stressed that while these were serious charges, they were also as yet untested and Pickett was entitled to the presumption of innocence.

“Nothing has come easy [for Pickett], but through the force of his will, against all the odds, through the love of his family and the care of football clubs, he’s turned his life around,” Gale said.

“He’s had to overcome a lot of challenges, some many of us could never imagine. He’s been an inspiration to me, to many.”

Debut to remember: Marlion Pickett with the premiership cup.Credit: Getty Images

The players, upset for their teammate, gathered again. Some were angry he had been made to spend the night in the cells. Just tell him we love him. We are there for him. Anything he needs. Sources said that was the essence of the messages the players wanted the club to convey to Pickett.

Perth Central Court is a brutalist architectural structure. Pre-cast grey concrete, almost windowless above the ground-floor entry, it has thin diagonal concrete panels across the few dark glass windows of the upper levels.

Pickett was familiar with the building and the system. His background is one of difficulty and disadvantage that is truly difficult to understand from the big eastern seaboard cities. A Noongar man, Pickett spent much of his early life in Perth’s northern suburbs, although his family moved to Manjimup, in south-west WA, when he was 11, and he spent his early teens there.

He had served 30 months in jail for burglaries in his late teens. These details, while widely known from a TV documentary and Pickett’s 2021 book, Belief, were also facts led in court at the bail hearing. These facts also informed the redemption story of Marlion Pickett, the footballer.

Pickett had more reasons to not make it as a footballer than make it.

“I stuffed up in the past. Probably boredom,” he said on the 2012 ABC documentary, Outside Chance, about a criminal justice program that allowed inmates of the minimum security Woorooloo Prison Farm to play football matches against local teams. He was sheepish about his past but also unsparing with the truth. He owned what he had done.

“Alcohol. Being brought up around drugs. Everything goes downhill from there. Guess you’ve got nothing to look forward to, so you start committing crimes, then from crime, you end up in here.”

When he was released from prison in 2013, Pickett walked into South Fremantle Football Club determined to make it as a footballer. He swore off alcohol and has not had a drink in the 11 years since.

In 2019, Pickett was picked in the mid-year draft by Richmond at the age of 27. He had broken a thumb days before the draft and thought the injury would ruin his dream. Richmond picked him anyway.

Marlion Pickett was back at Richmond training on Thursday.Credit: Eddie Jim

He arrived in Melbourne on his own, leaving his partner and four kids at home as he attempted to settle in and apply himself to football without distraction. The family arrived soon afterwards.

Pickett made his debut in the 2019 grand final. Think of that, your first game of AFL football is on the biggest day of the football calendar in front of 100,000 people at the MCG and untold millions on TV. It is one of the biggest games the club has played in decades and the coach, and the club, trust you in your first game to be there with them. His first move was a stunning pirouette out of the middle. He played well. He won a premiership on debut. The next year when Richmond won a second successive flag Pickett was there again.

In Perth Central Court Pickett’s two lives collided. His history in that city and its justice system, and his career as an AFL footballer. The public seats were full of media.

The court heard that Pickett had been charged in connection with break-ins at four businesses in Perth over the last Christmas-New Year period and cash worth about $360,000 was stolen from safes.

During the bail application, prosecutors said Pickett could be tied to the alleged crimes because his mobile phone was found to have “pinged” from a mobile reception tower near one of the burglary locations at the time the offence was being committed.

Manera told the bail hearing it was well established that using this type of evidence to substantiate charges was unreliable and that it only proved that his phone was in the area, rather than the owner of the phone.

Two amounts of money $6000 and $9000 had been deposited into Pickett’s account on one day by other alleged co-offenders.

A campervan that was used allegedly to transfer some of the money interstate had been rented in Pickett’s name. CCTV footage also showed individuals wearing workwear clothing similar to that police said had been purchased by Pickett.

Marlion Pickett outside court in Perth.Credit: AAP

Manera said in court the clothing allegedly used in the offences had not been seized from Pickett’s home “or any of the property the subject of these charges”.

He added that no DNA evidence had been found at the scene to link Pickett to the crimes.

“You can’t identify in the photographs who the offenders were,” he said. “There are other photographs, but they do not have Mr Pickett at the offence site.”

Magistrate Erin O’Donnell said the charges were serious and if proven would almost certainly draw an immediate custodial sentence. She said the evidence was presently circumstantial.

“The strength of the evidence, it would appear, is largely circumstantial. It may well remain a circumstantial case against Mr Pickett unless some evidence emerges from the scene,” she said.

“It would seem that the links are established via bank records, the factor of the phone ping having some connection to a brother-in-law who is going to be a co-accused and the clothing that is similar to clothing purchased from an outlet. All of those factors together may well in due course amount to a strong circumstantial case.

“I am not in a position to say the evidence is overwhelming … these offences are very serious and at this stage there seems to be some good circumstantial evidence.”

Pickett’s lawyer told the court that Pickett was a paid mentor for Indigenous youth through Richmond’s Korin Gamadji Institute. Pickett is the sole provider for his family, so a prison term would be devastating.

Pickett was granted bail, with strict conditions regarding contacting five alleged co-accused offenders. He must also report once a week to a police station, but during the week to allow him to continue his AFL career.

Marlion Pickett is a respected figure at Richmond.Credit: Getty Images

Outside court Manera expressed his dismay that Pickett had been forced to spend the night in jail and apply for bail.

“I was surprised because they’ve got the option of releasing him from the police station and with a person with his record, and most importantly a massive gap in criminal offending, I would’ve thought it was appropriate to release him straight from the police station,” he said.

He said the prosecution’s case was circumstantial but said that “doesn’t mean it’s a weak case, doesn’t mean it’s a strong case”.

Pickett boarded a plane to Melbourne accompanied by Richmond list manager Blair Hartley. The club and Pickett agreed that given what he had been through it was best that he did not attempt to play football this weekend, against St Kilda on Saturday night, and that he instead spend time with his family.

“Right now the best environment for Marlion Pickett to be in is inside the four walls of the Richmond Football Club and be back here in Victoria with his family.”

He stayed away from the club, not wanting to be a distraction. Richmond’s Indigenous player development manager, Ange Burt, went to Pickett’s home in Melbourne’s north during the week with food packages from the club. Television media were parked outside the house and Pickett and his family didn’t want to go out and be filmed.

His teammates wanted to throw their arms around Pickett and sent him texts of support, but he was more concerned for them, and the pending match. He returned to Richmond’s club’s Punt Road headquarters for training on Thursday.

“It’s obviously looking after your people… Football clubs are families and they look after people,” Riewoldt said.

“Right now the best environment for Marlion Pickett to be in is inside the four walls of the Richmond Football Club and be back here in Victoria with his family.”

Gale said the week off, which is followed by a bye for the Tigers, gave Pickett time to allow the focus on him abate and get back into his routine.

“He’ll prepare with the team, he’ll train, he’ll be turning up and engaging, which, we think, is really important for him to do that at this stage and we fully expect him to play against Brisbane in two weeks time.”

In two games, Pickett will activate a trigger for another year on his contract, which runs to the end of this season. Richmond are just as eager for Pickett to play those games as he is. They want him to hit that trigger and bring on that contract to give him some reassurance with his football career while so many other things are in doubt and turmoil.

“Nothing has come easy to Marlion,” Gale said. “He has had to deal with challenges and we drafted him eyes wide open acknowledging, I guess, the incredible work he had done to turn his life around with great support from his family, support from South Fremantle, us and we will continue to support him and that’s what we do as a football club.”

Pickett is due to appear in court again via video link on August 21.

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