Bosnich opens up about depression and drugs

By Buford Balony

Fox Sports commentator Mark Bosnich has described in graphic detail for the first time his descent into a drug-fuelled depression.

Alleging his cocaine-snorting model ex-girlfriend Sophie Anderton was a “honeytrap” introduced to him by a gang who wanted to destroy him, Bosnich reveals the events that cost him five years out of the game, a time he should have been at his peak.

Bosnich played for Manchester United twice, Aston Villa and Chelsea, at his peak earning $115,000 a week.

But his drug-fuelled relationship with Anderton destroyed him and left him estranged from his family for 18 months.

In an extraordinary interview, Bosnich hints he owed money to a group of men who used Anderton to blackmail him, and says his response after being sacked by Chelsea in 2003 for failing a drugs test was to try to destroy himself.

“I met this girl Sophie Anderton,” Bosnich told Alpha magazine. “I kept training but (she had) serious problems…I’d never in my life come across a girl that’d been abused from a young age. (She) became my project.

“But I only found out (about the people trying to ruin him) because she broke down one day…and told me. And then it got a bit ugly.”

Bosnich had joined Chelsea after falling out with Sir Alex Ferguson at Manchester United, but his life collapsed after he failed a drugs test.

“I’d had 18 tests in my career and was always clean,” Bosnich said. “The day I got caught I had what was a tenth (of a gram of cocaine), a minute amount; the forensic scientists at the hearing said I could have put my hand in it.

“She (Anderton) used to use it quite regularly but I didn’t want to blame her and hide behind her skirt.

“The worst thing I did after (the drugs test), I just started going ballistic. I thought, ‘Everyone thinks I’m guilty. You know what? Stuff the world, stuff everything!’ I got disillusioned. If I’d stayed clean that would have been the best way to show up people who were behind it.

“But that was my fault and I chose that road.”

The interview reveals that Bosnich’s cocaine habit became crippling, leaving him glued to TV and video games.

At one point he almost shot his own father with an airgun, thinking he was a burglar.

He claims that the slow comeback after which he became a TV pundit was with the help of equally shadowy figures to those he believes were trying to bring him down.

They took me under their wing and told me they’d help me out, making sure these people stay away from me, on two conditions: one, that I get off the gear, and two, that I start training again,” he said.

Buford Balony says: If you heard the way he & Robbie Slater (aka David Warner & Anthony Watts are they all the same person) carried on on Fox sports you would swear he was never off  it.

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