Wendell Sailor has almost always loved being in the public eye.
The 52-year-old dual-code rugby international loved it long before he was really in it. As an 18-year-old, his brazen “look at me” personality was off-putting even to coach Wayne Bennett, who only reluctantly offered Sailor a one-year contract at the Brisbane Broncos in 1993.
Had he not, perhaps Sailor would never have made it into the spotlight, nor would the offences for which he was made to front court on Friday.
As he’d once predicted, stadium turnstiles would spin with excited fans when he swapped codes from league to union in 2002 (“when Dell Sells, watch these babies swing” was his famous line), the X-ray machine and metal detectors processed the reporters and court watchers arriving for the hearing at the Downing Centre Local Court in Sydney.
When Sailor’s attendance in court was announced to the magistrate, everyone turned to watch the entrance of one of rugby league’s greatest showmen.
Sailor had pleaded guilty to three offences from two separate incidents, which the magistrate agreed were fuelled by alcohol. The first occurred in Pappy’s Bar in Sydney’s city centre in 2024, when an intoxicated Sailor was asked to leave.
“Do you know who I am?” he asked as the manager called the police.
Sailor was arrested but granted bail on the condition that he refrain from being publicly intoxicated, the court documents state.
Two months later, he was found drunk and swaying in the middle of the road in Wollongong. It took nine police officers to detain Sailor that night.
All of the charges – of intimidation, resisting arrest and remaining near a licensed premises after being excluded from it – were dropped on Friday as the magistrate found in favour of lawyer Adam Houda’s application to have the case considered under the Mental Health Act.
Now, Sailor will have to follow the treatment plan drafted by his GP to continue seeing a psychiatrist, to engage in alcohol counselling and to continue taking naltrexone – a drug that reduces the desire to drink alcohol.
But to understand the court outcome on Friday – one of several forays outside the sports pages since that 18-year-old signed his first league contract – one has to understand the events that occurred just two days after Sailor was born in Royal Brisbane Hospital on July 16, 1974.
He’d first divulged these to the public in 2013 when his second memoir Crossing the Line was published. The then 39-year-old had been retired from the NRL for four years, had stints on Dancing with the Stars and Celebrity Apprentice Australia, and became a regular on a variety of sport and breakfast programs across TV networks.
It had also been seven years since his two-year ban from rugby union for cocaine use, and this memoir was pitched as a way for fans to fall back in love with him after the scandal.
“Sometimes I think there must be, somewhere deep inside me, a two-way switch,” he wrote.
This switch could be pushed in two directions. The first diverted a maelstrom of brazen energy into four grand final wins for the Brisbane Broncos. It was the same energy that then propelled him to rugby union in 2002.
At his best, Sailor channelled his energy into plays that are memorialised in YouTube compilations titled “King of the Wing”. In the NRL, he scored 127 tries in 222 games, made 14 State of Origin appearances and, in union, earned 37 caps for the Wallabies.
But this switch could also be pushed in the opposite way, with no shutdown button to override it.
“When you switch off the player, the energy goes from my body to my head, and you get the performer,” he wrote.
At its best, the “performer” setting delivered the popular and outgoing party boy of the 2000s, loved by Broncos and Dragons fans and even cherished by the introverted Bennett. It is also the mode that allowed Sailor to thrive on TV and, most recently, on radio station Triple M.
At its worst, Sailor dubbed the second setting “self-destruction mode”.
This button, he wrote, formed after his birth mother, Penny, gave him away to her neighbours two days after he was born.
“If there’s one person in your life who you can count on to give you unconditional love, it’s the woman who gave birth to you, right? … Take that away and it undermines everything,” he wrote. “It’s always there, gnawing at you, pushing that switch the wrong way.”
On Friday, magistrate Jennifer Atkinson acknowledged what Sailor seems to have known about himself since that memoir was published – that underlying mental health issues caused the turbulent behaviour for which he then had to answer.
He’d resigned from his job at Triple M as his family had begun to break down and his marriage came to an end. The loss of his mother, Atkinson told the court, worsened his mental health, leading to depression and a reliance on alcohol to cope.
But, she said, the apex point of this consumption – the two arrests which led to the facts before her – had been a wake-up call. After the second, Sailor went to his GP, saw a psychiatrist and got a prescription for medication to help him avoid a reliance on alcohol.
Reading the psychiatric report prepared for the case, Atkinson said, “the dark clouds are lifting”.
“There are clear signs that things are improving,” she said.
It will be up to Sailor now to manage his internal switch – he must comply with the mental health care plan prepared for him or face another court hearing.
On his way out of the court, Sailor stopped only briefly and perhaps uncharacteristically, remained silent.
As he walked away, a stranger cut above the questions from reporters.
“You’re a top footy player man,” the stranger yelled.
To this, Sailor replied a small “Thank you.”
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