Who? Fev, of course. He’s everywhere.
How do we know that?
Because the ever-voracious media is telling us, through words, photographs, vision, audio.
We know the man himself has made mistakes. We know he has discipline issues. We know he’s Brendan Fevola.
On Tuesday, everywhere for Fev was a brief appearance at Casey Fields as he made acquaintance with a potential new club, the Casey Scorpions. Next morning we had a close-up of Fev’s guts in a back page picture. I wish this writer’s guts were in similar shape.
He was chased through the front door out Casey way by a breathless team of reporters, led by Channel Nine’s Tony Jones, a boom microphone in hand, and a staccato set of questions in mouth.
None of the rat-a-tat-tat of questions was met with a response from Fev. When he reached the door, his answer to the whole crew was simple. "I want to train well," he said, or something to that effect. As you would.
These were the first words we’ve heard from his mouth for months. All the rest has come from Twitter, from his management, or more often by conjecture.
Thursday, everywhere was, apparently, the poker room at Crown Casino. He’d dropped in for a round of cards, apparently, but the vigilant crew at Crown decided they’d act in his best interests and shoo him out.
They would have know from one of the multitude of reports that the former Coleman Medallist was addicted not only to goal-kicking, but the punt, in all its myriad forms.
We loved the quote apportioned to the Crown spokesman, Gary O’Neill, as reported on the Herald Sun’s website. O’Neill, apparently, was paraphrasing Fev’s guardian angel, the Crown staffer who, he stressed, was not a security officer: "In the circumstances Mr Fevola, Crown believes that it would be better for you not to be on the gaming floor". Very thoughtful.
Fev would be any publisher’s dream: he hasn’t needed to keep his own diary, it’s been kept for him by so many others, keen to discover his slightest foible.
We can only imagine if it had been Fev who tripped on the carpet (instead of PM Julia Gillard) when meeting Australia’s ambassador to the UN, Kim Beasley, earlier this week. The headlines would have been molten hot: "Fev trips up again".
We know Fev has done silly things. We know he’s wasted opportunities. We wonder where the rest of his life will take him.
We also hope that he has a chance to be something that he can control.
Although, on that matter, we can only wonder where he is getting his advice.
The last paragraph in the Herald Sun report said: "Fevola has been paid an estimated $30,000 for a tell-all interview on tonight's The Footy Show."
Who would know if it’s 30 chips, or 30 grand? But we can only hold our breath and hope we don’t hear from him, or of him, until he believes his life is in order; and he’s something again.
