- Former North Melbourne teammates had a bitter falling out
- Stevens’ ex-wife cheated on him with Carey in 2002
- The championship winner told a terrifying story on Wednesday night
Two-time AFL champion Anthony Stevens has spoken about the moment a glass window left him within an inch of death after he fell and hit him as he left a pub.
Stevens, 53, suffered a severe cut from the corner of his mouth to his shoulder when glass fell on him outside a hotel in North Melbourne in 2000.
The freak accident happened as he was leaving the Redback Brewery Hotel, which was co-owned by his then teammate Wayne Carey, just two years before Carey’s affair with Stevens’ ex-wife Kelli became public, forcing the footballing great to leave the club in disgrace.
Stevens had gone to the pub after a loss to the Kangaroos and had just one beer with his friends before leaving the establishment through a side door.
“I heard a bang and felt a force hit me in the side of the face – essentially a whole glass window that came crashing down and hit me from there to the back of my head,” Stevens recalled on Channel Seven’s The Front Bar on Wednesday night, although he declined to name Carey.
‘It cut two major arteries and they basically said it was a centimeter away from the main artery and if it had hit me I would have bled to death.
“But I was two seconds away from the Royal Melbourne Hospital.”
Former football star Shannon Grant’s brother got in his car and rushed Stevens to the hospital for treatment.
Anthony Stevens (pictured right with North Melbourne teammate, great Glenn Archer) recalled the night a loose pane of glass came dangerously close to killing him.
The championship winner was sidelined for more than three months after the incident, in which he lost two litres of blood.
“If I had been 10 minutes away from a hospital I would have bled to death,” he told Fox Footy in 2015.
‘The next day the specialist came and assessed the whole situation and basically said I would have to reconnect the nerves.
“He basically said he didn’t know how lucky I would be. He said I would probably have a drooping shoulder and a drooping lip for the rest of my life and that I would definitely never play football again.
The pub where Stevens lost his life was co-owned by his then friend Wayne Carey (pictured together), who infamously ended their friendship just two years later.
Carey and Stevens, who were once close on and off the field, had a bitter feud that resurfaced when they clashed in a Melbourne pub in 2022.
‘I wasn’t too worried about football at the time, but I eventually had surgery and they were able to put everything back in… I ended up playing 14 weeks later.’
Carey and Stevens’ friendship ended with the episode of infidelity, which saw ‘The King’ leave the North and join the Adelaide Crows.
The two met on the field when the teams played in 2003, and then met again off the field in 2022.
They were reportedly separated when they crossed paths in a Melbourne pub in August of that year when they were in town for a 1996 Prime Minister’s meeting.
Witnesses claimed Carey accused Stevens of “talking behind his back and telling people they couldn’t get through to him and not to bother trying to get through to him, but then being fine in person,” according to a report on SEN radio.