Former West Coast Eagles footballer Ben Russell Sharp has pleaded guilty to armed robbery and drug trafficking, blaming his descent on a culture of drug abuse at the AFL club he joined as a teenager in 2004.
After a three-year stint with the Perth-based club, where he played only a handful of preseason games, Sharp, now 30, returned to Melbourne with a fierce addiction to cocaine and methamphetamine after allegedly succumbing to pressure from a group of senior player.
In December 2014, Sharp, his younger brother and another man used a sawn-off shotgun and a pistol during a dawn robbery of a van driver who had collected $287,000 from three McDonald’s restaurants in Melbourne’s west.
Barrister Peter Kilduff said Sharp’s journey from football prodigy to armed bandit had been fuelled by a destructive drug habit that could be traced to his first months with the West Coast Eagles.
Sharp was approached by a senior player at a club social event and told: “you’re either in or you’re out”, according to Mr Kilduff.
It was a reference to drug use, and the teenager soon became a regular cocaine user, before using ice for the first time.
“They all trained together and they all partied together.”
“This is an 18-year-old man ready and willing to play top class football, and he blows it all,” Mr Kilduff said.
Sharp conceded he first dabbled in cocaine in a bid for acceptance from his teammates.
“I had to use cocaine. I thought it was a way to get in with the boys, so I used coke,” Sharp said in a report presented to County Court judge Geoff Chettle on Wednesday.
Mr Kilduff said drug use was not only tolerated, but encouraged by an influential clique of West Coast Eagles players, citing the tragic death of Chris Mainwaring following a cocaine binge in 2007 and Ben Cousins’ long-running battle with ice addiction.
Cousins referred to Sharp in his autobiography, Ben Cousins: My Life Story, in which he admitted using his last phone call to ring Sharp, after he was arrested for public intoxication outside Crown casino.
Cousins claimed Sharp had told police to “f–k off”, which earned Cousins additional time in the cells.
Despite winning a best and fairest award with VFL club Werribee Tigers in 2011, Sharp was never able to shake his ice habit back in Melbourne.
Unemployed and living with his parents in Point Cook, Sharp was smoking about $200 worth of the deadly drug a day in 2014, when he hatched the armed robbery plan with his younger brother Christopher Sharp and mutual friend Nathan Lack.
The three men were arrested in February 2014, with police finding an M16 assault rifle in the ceiling of Mr Lack’s Williamstown unit.
Ben Sharp was also charged with trafficking 310 grams of ice to Western Australia and stealing the Commodore that was used in the armed robbery in Sunbury.
On Wednesday, he pleaded guilty in the County Court to armed robbery, drug offences and handling stolen goods.
Christopher Sharp pleaded guilty to one count of armed robbery, while Nathan Lack pleaded guilty to armed robbery and a serious gun offence.
All three men will be sentenced on April 4.
Cameron Houston, The Age
