FROM PRISON TO PREMIERSHIP
FOOTBALL’S greatest fairytale is preparing to write its latest chapter.
And if a young Marlion Pickett was to be told that just over 10 years after first finding himself in serious trouble with the law he’d be a role model for Indigenous youth and preparing for his second AFL grand final, his response would have been a simple one. “I probably would have laughed and said ‘you’re dreamin’,” Pickett said this week. “I’ve come a long way as a person, and as a father.”
The 28-year-old is aiming for two AFL flags within 20 games. It’s a long way from Manjimup, where he was born, and a world away from Wooroloo Prison Farm and the strict Acacia Prison where he served time in his late-teens and early 20s. There’d been an upbringing where at times he went to school hungry. As he grew older, there were fights. Theft. Drug use and dealing, at times. Family tragedies, too, as he details in his autobiography, Belief, which sees the Tiger open up more than ever before and will be released on November 1 having been written with author Dave Warner completely via Zoom during football’s shutdown earlier this year. It’s a “raw” story, Pickett admits. But it’s one he owns. It’s part of him.
“It was definitely tough (to revisit some of the memories),” Pickett said this week. “I got it out there, and I’m proud of what I’ve overcome and all of the things that my family and I had to go through just to make it where I am now.
“I got out of prison and had six years in the WAFL and was drafted at 27 – you could hardly see that (happening). I just really wanted to express my story, and how far I’ve come and grown as a person and how much that I’ve been through in overcoming adversity.”
The father of four – whose children and partner, Jess, have spent not only those years of his incarceration and football rise by his side, but all but 10 days of this season’s Queensland quarantine alongside him, too – mentors Indigenous youth and will soon travel back to Perth where he intends to make several visits to his former prison.
He also works as part of the club’s Korin Gamadji Institute which serves to support education and employment pathways for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people, keeping up his commitments via Zoom while in the hub.
After prevailing in last year’s grand final in his firstever AFL game, this year has been markedly different.
He has played another 18, including all three lead-up finals, and in typically humble fashion – feels almost bad about it.
He wants any kudos today to be shared.
“It’s for everyone that
believed in me.”
BELIEF, published by Simon & Schuster Australia, is available in hardback, ebook and audio from November 1