Re: Warne in new sex shame report
An interesting article at Sydney Morning Herald about Warnie…I just feel sorry for guy…poor guy…he did so much charity work after tsunami, probably more tan any other cricketer, but this media never left him alone in his private life…poor soul…
Shaaaane … don’t come back
June 27, 2005
http://www.smh.com.au/ffximage/2005/06/26/pt_warnes_ent-lead__200x250.jpg Simone Warne has said “Enough!”.
Photo: Getty Images
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Despite all the adulation, Shane Warne is still desperately looking for love, too often in the wrong places, writes Trevor Marshallsea.
THERE is a certain I-told-you-so factor about the latest calamity to engulf Australian cricket’s pre-eminent flawed genius. Shane Warne had said someone was trying to ruin his marriage, and now, sure enough, it appears he has.
Of the myriad dramas to impact on Warne’s career, the Sunday tabloid instalment confirming his wife, Simone, had a humiliation threshold after all counts as probably the least surprising. After nearly 10 years of marriage and, conservatively, a handful of sex scandals involving the game’s greatest leg-spinner, yesterday’s announcement that the two are separating will not have caught Warne watchers off guard.
Australians have seen Warne grow up, as it were, since his Test debut as a chubby 22-year-old. They have been held in thrall by his gift of spin bowling, but as the super-human bowler morphed into the Human Headline, they have also recoiled over scandals involving anything from an Indian bookmaker to his mum’s fluid tablets, a recalcitrant New Zealand schoolboy to a host of extramarital dalliances.
Now, with Warne approaching 36, it appears the nation could be witnessing his midlife crisis. Two weeks ago he announced that so terrified was he about going bald, he had begun laser treatment for a new thatch which, the press blurb embarrassingly said, should make it easy to bowl a maiden over.
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Later that week came the Sunday tabloid revelations in Britain about a brief sexual interlude with 25-year-old student Laura Sayers, who said she had sex with Warne in London during his current county cricket stint with Hampshire, before his wife and three children joined him in Britain two weeks ago.
Simone Warne had stood by her man through similar episodes, but apparently this was a fling too far. It comes after the family had announced somewhat unclear plans to settle permanently in England and spend half the year in Australia, as usual, though Spain was also mentioned as a possible base.
The separation announcement also came with the Warnes bracing for more revelations of the blond bowler’s infidelity in the British press at the weekend. It is believed Warne, given a two-week break from his Hampshire duties, has taken his family to Spain. One report said Simone Warne would return to Australia with their three children, daughters Brooke, 7, and Summer, 3, and son Jackson, 6.
Disappointingly for tabloid editors, stories of Warne’s sexual episodes will henceforth lose currency for the media, even if the media were showing fatigue on the subject in any event. Regardless, now that Warne is, erm, free to pursue other women, the odd father or two around Southampton way would have been locking up their daughters last night.
As Warne has looked around for someone to blame for the trouble he gets himself into, the media have often become the target, though more lately so have the kiss-and-tell lust-interests who have sold their stories. After Sayers’s revelations, Warne said only that he was fed up with people trying to sell stories relating to him — one way of not having to deny the incident took place.
In February last year, after one sex scandal or other, Simone Warne told The Australian Women’s Weekly that Bad Boy Hubby was on his last chance.
Following separate salacious allegations about her husband from a South African woman, Helen Cohen Alon, and a Melbourne stripper, Angela Gallagher, Simone Warne told the magazine: “I saw how upset he was when he told me about it all … So I’d be pretty shocked if he did go down that road again. There’ll be no family and no wife at the end of it.”
If she was indeed pretty shocked by the headlines a few days after arriving in England, the last part of her statement at least appears to have also been fulfilled. Warne should not be surprised, having canvassed this outcome upon returning from the 12-month doping ban which coincided with Cohen Alon’s and Gallagher’s claims.
“I think this is my last chance with everything,” he said then. “My last chance with my wife, Simone, and my last chance with my life. This is it.”
That life will now change irrevocably. It remains to be seen how Warne the cricketer will cope with what could, perhaps, be his most distressing personal drama. Considering how he has ploughed on unaffected by controversy before - he has been Test cricket’s most successful bowler in the 15 months since his doping ban ended - we should not expect him to lose form for the coming Ashes series.
What the separation will achieve - apart from peace and quiet for his wife - will be to reinforce the disappointment for so many Australian cricket fans who would so dearly like to love him. The irony is that Warne, insecure despite his achievements, dearly wants to be loved. Sometimes a little too much, as the scandal sheets reveal.
“Shane’s a very sensitive soul, and he does care what people think of him,” his long-term mentor, former Australian Test spinner Terry Jenner, said last summer. “He’s a Virgo, after all. I’m one so I should know. But his insecurities don’t come from any comparisons to another bowler, they just come from him wanting people to like him. When he’s got the ball in his hand, he just does his business.”
After releasing a statement insisting the Warnes remained good friends despite their split, Warne’s brother and manager, Jason, was reluctant to comment further yesterday. Describing the separation as “only a new decision” rather than one that had long been coming, he said little on how the two were faring, saying: “They’re talking things through and spending time as a family unit.”
Unfortunately for the man who has taken more wickets than anyone in the 128-year history of Test cricket, Warne will be remembered as much for the philandering as for the flipper, lamented for his indiscretions and dodging the blame for them as he is lauded for making a cricket ball do everything but talk.
What was then his biggest drama erupted in 1998 when it was revealed that in 1994 Warne was fined $8000 by governing body Cricket Australia for taking $5000 from an Indian bookmaker to provide information about pitch and weather conditions.
Early in 1999 Warne was caught smoking despite a $200,000 deal with a nicotine substitute manufacturer to quit. Though he complained his “soap opera” life might lead him to also quit cricket, he was soon bowling Australia to World Cup triumph. The following year, Cricket Australia reprimanded Australia’s then vice-captain for grabbing the bag of a 15-year-old New Zealand schoolboy who had photographed him smoking.
Warne paid a price for another habit he has found hard to break when, also in 2000, he was stripped of the vice-captaincy after British tabloid revelations that he had left lewd messages on the voicemail of a 22-year-old Leicestershire nurse, Donna Wright. Cricket Australia no longer becomes involved in Warne’s personal life as he is a rank and file team member, though chief executive James Sutherland has admitted such publicity as last week’s sex scandal affected the image of the game. In 2000, however, Cricket Australia deemed his behaviour unacceptable for a team leader.
Warne’s catastrophe chart had a new No.1 when he tested positive to diuretics on the eve of the 2003 World Cup, the newly slimmed spinner admitting taking “fluid tablets” offered by his mother Brigitte to look his best for a TV appearance.
While Warne cooled his heels 45-year-old Cohen Alon put hot rocks under them with claims he had pestered her for sex during Australia’s 2002 South Africa tour. Then came Gallagher, claiming to have had a three-month affair with Warne, who spluttered in a TV interview that “someone” was out to wreck his marriage.
Simone Warne’s patience appeared spent. She had already taken her daughters to her parents’ home, leaving Warne with his son. The family then fled to Spain to escape the media glare and repair their marriage. Those repairs could not withstand this latest storm.
http://www.smh.com.au/news/cricket/shaaaane-133-dont-come-back/2005/06/26/1119724526763.html?oneclick=true
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