DT
By Josh Massoud May 24, 2008 12:00am
GOOGLE is no friend of John Elias. He discovered as much this week, when the prolific internet search engine destroyed a blossoming romance.
"I'd been out to dinner with this girl in Paddington and it went well. She suggested we should catch up again," Elias recounts. "The next day she calls to say we can't see each other again. I asked why and she replied, 'Because I've just Googled you and read that you are a very dangerous man'."
So, what chilled the warming cockles of this woman's heart? Google leaves little to the imagination on that one. "Former league player in court for shooting partner," screams its first entry when "John Elias" is punched into the search field. That's somewhat of a mood killer - especially for a prospective partner. "I completely understand why she acted that way," Elias says with a smile. "It's something I'm going to have to deal with for the rest of my life."
Elias can't erase his past. And even if Google ceased to exist, it would pursue and inevitably catch him everywhere he goes. Elias recently walked from a lengthy term in prison, but its legacy still holds him captive.
The fact is Elias cannot escape from being an identity. Kinder observations label him a "colourful character" or "loveable rogue". Spend a couple of hours with the league journeyman and you'll find there's plenty of truth in both. But there's more to Elias than he'd care for people to recall. Everyone remembers his transient league career, which covered more of Sydney than the latest GPS device. Elias changed colours six times between 1984 and 1994, but it's an unbroken 4½-year stint in prison stripes that overwhelms his public persona these days.
Elias was sentenced in February 2004. He was tried for shooting business associate Raymond Younan in the thigh at a McDonald's car park and found guilty. The incident capped an extensive history of gambling debts and threats between the pair, which, in time, extended to Elias's mother.
"Let's say I just don't take threats lightly. Especially against my family," Elias tells The Saturday Daily Telegraph. "People always ask me if I would have acted the same way again. The simple answer is I would not mix with the type of company that leads to that happening. The long and the short of it is I should not have taken the law into my own hands. I regret that and it hurt a lot of people, none more so than my mother."
"There was no excuse. I made a choice. It was all about making a quick buck, dealing in stolen gear . . . that type of thing. When it comes to easy dollars, there's plenty to be made out there. What kids who are thinking about this stuff should realise is that the streets are riddled with police informants. If you are going to live on the edge, you are going to fall off."
And fall he did. A pensive expression seizes Elias's face when asked to recall the morning he farewelled the outside world. Over the next four years he would be introduced to the State's most gruesome maximum-security jails in a migratory penal sequence that mirrored his previous life as a footballing nomad. Silverwater, Long Bay, Parklea, Windsor, Junee and Parramatta . . . Elias did time at them all.
"The first thing that went through my head was, 'My poor mother, she doesn't need this s...'," he finally answers.
On the outside, Elias boasted a sporting who's who of loyal backers. Blue-chippers such as Wayne Bennett, Alan Jones, Arthur Beetson and Johnny Lewis - all of whom still vouch for his social appeal. On the phone or in person, each was there for him at the time.
But for all their combined wisdom and respect, Elias knew it counted for nothing on the inside. "I tried to switch off on the good things that used to be in my life," he says. "That was a big piece of advice a couple of lifers gave me. They said you have to switch off to survive. Accept there is no outside world."
That's why Elias chose solitary confinement. It spelt 19-hour days alone in a cell. He would read whatever tattered biographies were available in the library - Nelson Mandela and Ray Charles were the highlights - and pen his own memoirs. "That was a big thing," he says. "I wrote 20 chapters on my life. Probably 400 pages. At first it was all hand written, then when I got to a prison with computers I typed it all out. The manuscript is at home. It's the only thing I've kept from jail. Aside from what's in my head. Sometimes I wonder how I got through it. If I had to do it all over again . . . I don't know if I could. There's so many ways you can get off your head to pass the day - medication, sleeping tablets. But I'd survived cancer so that gave me strength. Surviving cancer is not easy."
His effort to defy a three-year onslaught of non-Hodgkins Lymphoma between 1999 and 2002 is easily forgotten, given the racier events that ensued. In hindsight, the feat was a double-edged sword. On one hand it made Elias "feel invincible" and accelerated his criminal spiral into more brazen territory. On the other it equipped him with a survival instinct very few possess when they throw away the key.
"There were times I didn't even want visitors. Don't get me wrong, I was grateful to everyone that came. But when they left, it made things harder," he says. IT was a challenge he faced regularly. One of Elias's favourite visitors was the teenage playmaker he blooded as a halfback while coach of Lebanon in 2002. The kid's name was Robbie Farah.
As his superstar stocks began to soar at Wests Tigers, Farah was constantly asked why he bothered associating with a convicted criminal.
"I'd just say he's always been good to me and that's all that matters," Farah explains. "The thing about John was that he accepted it. He said he deserved to be in jail. He wasn't dirty at anyone but himself."
Of the dozen or so trips Farah made with his Cedars teammates, one was particularly memorable. "We were in a communal room having a coffee," he reveals. "Suddenly, John pulled me aside and made me promise I'd never do drugs. Made me promise not to gamble too much or drink too much. He wanted to make sure I didn't end up like him. After that he rang me quite a bit and seemed to follow my career. I remember during the 2005 finals series, he rang me before most of the big games."
It was an early precursor to where Elias wants to devote his freedom. His sole desire is to coach - and not only in a footballing sense.
Lewis, arguably Australia's greatest-ever boxing trainer, endorses Elias's ambition. "John not only has a lot of knowledge about the game, but he also knows what the consequences are of walking the wrong side of the line. Who else do they want to drum some sense into these blokes?" Lewis asks. "I've always said if someone has good in them, I like them. If they have a lot of good, I befriend them. John Elias has more good in him than bad."
Last month, these pages revealed that Elias and Beetson had combined to apply for the vacant role at Les Catalans. This week, the pair were told they had missed out in favour of Broncos assistant Kevin Walters. The knockback is particularly interesting because Elias boasted a coaching reference from Walters' boss at Brisbane, Bennett. He and the master coach first met at Souths Brisbane in 1985. Elias moved north as a tearaway Sydney-sider with his own ideas.
"He wasn't like the other players in Brisbane," Bennett recalls. "He was super-confident. Sort of from the same mould as Wendell Sailor." To illustrate Elias's headstrong attitude, Bennett recounts the time he dropped the back-rower to reserve grade. Elias phoned the coach and "blew up", reminding Bennett he was capable of making 50 tackles a game. Bennett takes up the tale: "I said, 'What are you going to do when we've got the ball?'. I didn't want him to be half a player. It was an important conversation because I had to made it clear I was running the place."
"He learned from it and came back a better player. I took that on face value and that's what gained my respect. I remember grand final day that year. John turned up in the dressing sheds crying. He said he'd never been in a grand final. I said, 'You are meant to cry afterwards, not before.'
"We won the game."
Elias also won Bennett's admiration, but returned to Sydney the following season. The pair stayed in touch for good, and while Bennett never met him as an inmate, they held fortnightly telephone conversations while Elias awaited his release. "The calls never made you feel bad - and plenty would have," Bennett says. "He was more interested in giving me coaching advice about the Broncos. I always enjoyed the conversations. They were upbeat and positive. When he got out of jail he only had my home number. Then I made the mistake of ringing him back on my mobile one day. Now he won't stop calling me."
Elias re-entered the outside world on December 9 last year - the eve of his 44th birthday. Much had changed. Roads. Buildings. Technology. "I didn't know what an iPod was," he adds. "I had never seen one before."
Elias also recognised that Sydney had become "faster". As the months passed, requests for him to talk about jail also sped up. He refused them all, thinking that if he remained silent people would forget. Then came an encounter on Anzac Day at a Balmain pub that convinced him they would not. Enjoying a beer with former Roosters and Rabbitohs utility Nathan Wood, Elias was approached by a female stranger. "She just came up and said, 'I know you, you're a gangster'," he recalls. "I denied it but she kept carrying on, saying she recognised me and knew how dangerous I was."
"I had to laugh. What else can you do? But the thing that really got me is that afterwards she came up and gave me her business card. She was a real estate agent and wanted to take me to dinner and discuss some properties. Underbelly probably did me a favour there. But seriously, I find it strange how people want to paint you as a crim and then make a buck out of you."
It taught Elias something that might seem obvious in theory, but only becomes so when it happens in real life. "People say 'He's done the crime and done his time'. But I reckon very, very few actually believe it," he reasons. "It's easier to talk about giving people second chances, than do it. That's how the majority think and hey, they are entitled to. I can't deny it's a problem, but I can't let it eat away at me either. I've got no choice but to deal with it."
By Josh Massoud May 24, 2008 12:00am
GOOGLE is no friend of John Elias. He discovered as much this week, when the prolific internet search engine destroyed a blossoming romance.
"I'd been out to dinner with this girl in Paddington and it went well. She suggested we should catch up again," Elias recounts. "The next day she calls to say we can't see each other again. I asked why and she replied, 'Because I've just Googled you and read that you are a very dangerous man'."
So, what chilled the warming cockles of this woman's heart? Google leaves little to the imagination on that one. "Former league player in court for shooting partner," screams its first entry when "John Elias" is punched into the search field. That's somewhat of a mood killer - especially for a prospective partner. "I completely understand why she acted that way," Elias says with a smile. "It's something I'm going to have to deal with for the rest of my life."
Elias can't erase his past. And even if Google ceased to exist, it would pursue and inevitably catch him everywhere he goes. Elias recently walked from a lengthy term in prison, but its legacy still holds him captive.
The fact is Elias cannot escape from being an identity. Kinder observations label him a "colourful character" or "loveable rogue". Spend a couple of hours with the league journeyman and you'll find there's plenty of truth in both. But there's more to Elias than he'd care for people to recall. Everyone remembers his transient league career, which covered more of Sydney than the latest GPS device. Elias changed colours six times between 1984 and 1994, but it's an unbroken 4½-year stint in prison stripes that overwhelms his public persona these days.
Elias was sentenced in February 2004. He was tried for shooting business associate Raymond Younan in the thigh at a McDonald's car park and found guilty. The incident capped an extensive history of gambling debts and threats between the pair, which, in time, extended to Elias's mother.
"Let's say I just don't take threats lightly. Especially against my family," Elias tells The Saturday Daily Telegraph. "People always ask me if I would have acted the same way again. The simple answer is I would not mix with the type of company that leads to that happening. The long and the short of it is I should not have taken the law into my own hands. I regret that and it hurt a lot of people, none more so than my mother."
"There was no excuse. I made a choice. It was all about making a quick buck, dealing in stolen gear . . . that type of thing. When it comes to easy dollars, there's plenty to be made out there. What kids who are thinking about this stuff should realise is that the streets are riddled with police informants. If you are going to live on the edge, you are going to fall off."
And fall he did. A pensive expression seizes Elias's face when asked to recall the morning he farewelled the outside world. Over the next four years he would be introduced to the State's most gruesome maximum-security jails in a migratory penal sequence that mirrored his previous life as a footballing nomad. Silverwater, Long Bay, Parklea, Windsor, Junee and Parramatta . . . Elias did time at them all.
"The first thing that went through my head was, 'My poor mother, she doesn't need this s...'," he finally answers.
On the outside, Elias boasted a sporting who's who of loyal backers. Blue-chippers such as Wayne Bennett, Alan Jones, Arthur Beetson and Johnny Lewis - all of whom still vouch for his social appeal. On the phone or in person, each was there for him at the time.
But for all their combined wisdom and respect, Elias knew it counted for nothing on the inside. "I tried to switch off on the good things that used to be in my life," he says. "That was a big piece of advice a couple of lifers gave me. They said you have to switch off to survive. Accept there is no outside world."
That's why Elias chose solitary confinement. It spelt 19-hour days alone in a cell. He would read whatever tattered biographies were available in the library - Nelson Mandela and Ray Charles were the highlights - and pen his own memoirs. "That was a big thing," he says. "I wrote 20 chapters on my life. Probably 400 pages. At first it was all hand written, then when I got to a prison with computers I typed it all out. The manuscript is at home. It's the only thing I've kept from jail. Aside from what's in my head. Sometimes I wonder how I got through it. If I had to do it all over again . . . I don't know if I could. There's so many ways you can get off your head to pass the day - medication, sleeping tablets. But I'd survived cancer so that gave me strength. Surviving cancer is not easy."
His effort to defy a three-year onslaught of non-Hodgkins Lymphoma between 1999 and 2002 is easily forgotten, given the racier events that ensued. In hindsight, the feat was a double-edged sword. On one hand it made Elias "feel invincible" and accelerated his criminal spiral into more brazen territory. On the other it equipped him with a survival instinct very few possess when they throw away the key.
"There were times I didn't even want visitors. Don't get me wrong, I was grateful to everyone that came. But when they left, it made things harder," he says. IT was a challenge he faced regularly. One of Elias's favourite visitors was the teenage playmaker he blooded as a halfback while coach of Lebanon in 2002. The kid's name was Robbie Farah.
As his superstar stocks began to soar at Wests Tigers, Farah was constantly asked why he bothered associating with a convicted criminal.
"I'd just say he's always been good to me and that's all that matters," Farah explains. "The thing about John was that he accepted it. He said he deserved to be in jail. He wasn't dirty at anyone but himself."
Of the dozen or so trips Farah made with his Cedars teammates, one was particularly memorable. "We were in a communal room having a coffee," he reveals. "Suddenly, John pulled me aside and made me promise I'd never do drugs. Made me promise not to gamble too much or drink too much. He wanted to make sure I didn't end up like him. After that he rang me quite a bit and seemed to follow my career. I remember during the 2005 finals series, he rang me before most of the big games."
It was an early precursor to where Elias wants to devote his freedom. His sole desire is to coach - and not only in a footballing sense.
Lewis, arguably Australia's greatest-ever boxing trainer, endorses Elias's ambition. "John not only has a lot of knowledge about the game, but he also knows what the consequences are of walking the wrong side of the line. Who else do they want to drum some sense into these blokes?" Lewis asks. "I've always said if someone has good in them, I like them. If they have a lot of good, I befriend them. John Elias has more good in him than bad."
Last month, these pages revealed that Elias and Beetson had combined to apply for the vacant role at Les Catalans. This week, the pair were told they had missed out in favour of Broncos assistant Kevin Walters. The knockback is particularly interesting because Elias boasted a coaching reference from Walters' boss at Brisbane, Bennett. He and the master coach first met at Souths Brisbane in 1985. Elias moved north as a tearaway Sydney-sider with his own ideas.
"He wasn't like the other players in Brisbane," Bennett recalls. "He was super-confident. Sort of from the same mould as Wendell Sailor." To illustrate Elias's headstrong attitude, Bennett recounts the time he dropped the back-rower to reserve grade. Elias phoned the coach and "blew up", reminding Bennett he was capable of making 50 tackles a game. Bennett takes up the tale: "I said, 'What are you going to do when we've got the ball?'. I didn't want him to be half a player. It was an important conversation because I had to made it clear I was running the place."
"He learned from it and came back a better player. I took that on face value and that's what gained my respect. I remember grand final day that year. John turned up in the dressing sheds crying. He said he'd never been in a grand final. I said, 'You are meant to cry afterwards, not before.'
"We won the game."
Elias also won Bennett's admiration, but returned to Sydney the following season. The pair stayed in touch for good, and while Bennett never met him as an inmate, they held fortnightly telephone conversations while Elias awaited his release. "The calls never made you feel bad - and plenty would have," Bennett says. "He was more interested in giving me coaching advice about the Broncos. I always enjoyed the conversations. They were upbeat and positive. When he got out of jail he only had my home number. Then I made the mistake of ringing him back on my mobile one day. Now he won't stop calling me."
Elias re-entered the outside world on December 9 last year - the eve of his 44th birthday. Much had changed. Roads. Buildings. Technology. "I didn't know what an iPod was," he adds. "I had never seen one before."
Elias also recognised that Sydney had become "faster". As the months passed, requests for him to talk about jail also sped up. He refused them all, thinking that if he remained silent people would forget. Then came an encounter on Anzac Day at a Balmain pub that convinced him they would not. Enjoying a beer with former Roosters and Rabbitohs utility Nathan Wood, Elias was approached by a female stranger. "She just came up and said, 'I know you, you're a gangster'," he recalls. "I denied it but she kept carrying on, saying she recognised me and knew how dangerous I was."
"I had to laugh. What else can you do? But the thing that really got me is that afterwards she came up and gave me her business card. She was a real estate agent and wanted to take me to dinner and discuss some properties. Underbelly probably did me a favour there. But seriously, I find it strange how people want to paint you as a crim and then make a buck out of you."
It taught Elias something that might seem obvious in theory, but only becomes so when it happens in real life. "People say 'He's done the crime and done his time'. But I reckon very, very few actually believe it," he reasons. "It's easier to talk about giving people second chances, than do it. That's how the majority think and hey, they are entitled to. I can't deny it's a problem, but I can't let it eat away at me either. I've got no choice but to deal with it."
