No one expected him to fall from the heights of being a talented young rugby player.
“Either I’m going to end up in jail where I don’t want to be, or I’m dead, or I get my life back. And I thought well, I don’t want to die yet, I don’t want to end up in jail, and this is the only option left,” Guildford told Newshub.
It has taken him 33 years to get to this point. He has been battling addictions, convictions and a very public fall from grace along the way, from stripping naked and beating up strangers in a bar in Rarotonga to assaulting a woman in a taxi in Hamilton.
Now he is bankrupt and has been bankrupted.
“It shows how powerful addiction is. It takes no prisoners, it takes everything away from you, it strips you of your value, of everything you were before and leaves you alone and naked. It’s a pretty hard place to come back from,” he said. she said.
The former All Black star said he expects no sympathy or pity. Rather, she said that she only wants to tell her story in case someone else is walking the same dark path and needs to know that she is not alone.
Guildford is currently under house arrest at his home in Christchurch.
“I’m sober. The last time I touched alcohol was March 16, class A drugs a little bit before that, so early March, and I quit the game on April 17,” he said.
Of his many addictions, gambling has been the most troublesome and costly for him, even worse than cocaine and methamphetamine.
He admits that he once spent $25,000 on a single bet and estimates that he lost “probably everything” he ever won in his lifetime, which amounts to “a couple of million.”
Guildford grew up surrounded by gambling and from a young age it made it his own daily habit to bet on anything and everything.
“I didn’t want anyone to know that I was a player, the most screwed up All Black of all time, so I hid it pretty well,” he said.
Then, when his stellar rugby career stalled and the paychecks stopped coming, Guildford became desperate for money to feed his addiction.
First, he sold his Rugby World Cup gold medal for a couple thousand dollars. He then took aim at his grandfather, with whom he lived and who had become a father figure after his father died suddenly 13 years ago in the stands, moments after Guildford scored two tries as the Junior All Blacks won the World Cup. World.
“My dad wasn’t here to tell me what to do. He was the voice within our family, so when he died that’s when my parking brake came off and all my impulsiveness came in. I was hurt and, as they say, hurt people hurt.” to the people”. , and he was starting to hurt others,” Guildford said.
Without consent, Guildford transferred a total of $41,000 from his grandfather’s account to his own and ruined everything in the game.
“It was hard. It was definitely one of the hardest times of my life. I didn’t know what to do, I let my grandfather down,” he said.
Guildford was arrested: his family had called the police.
“At first I had a lot of hate. How could my grandfather do this to me, how could my family do this to me? And then I stopped being the victim and put my hand up, I made a mistake here, I have to own my shit and I’m sorry.”
But not before he tried to end her life.
“I knew the court was coming and the country would know every devil I had. That was too much for me. I had had enough, one guts, I couldn’t see any way out,” Guildford. he said.
