Blues legend Peter Bosustow yesterday told how he played peacemaker between a leading underworld figure and a convicted murderer.
Bosustow said he'd been asked by Chopper Read to smooth relations with Mick Gatto and the so-called Carlton Crew.
The high-flying forward knew Gatto, along with Alphonse Gangitano and Mark and Jason Moran, through their fervent support for the Blues.
"You'd meet them as a celebrity footballer, and that's the way they would treat you," Bosustow told the Herald Sun.
He said they didn't regard him as a member of the underworld.
Bosustow, who played 65 games with the Blues between 1981 and 1983, and Read have done more than 300 public speaking engagements together since 2001.
He recalled the day Read told him he'd "had a problem with Mick Gatto, and Alphonse and Jason as well".
"I said to him that Mick was a one-eyed Carlton supporter, so he asked me to go and speak to Mick for him.
"I said I would. I was oblivious to what was going on. I wasn't in that area. So I just bowled into one of the Carlton restaurants one day, and Mick was there with his minder.
"We both shook hands and I sat down. I said, 'I need to talk to you about Chopper Read.'
"He said, 'Oh, yes.'
"I asked, 'Do you have a problem with Chopper Read?' He said, 'Absolutely not.' And I said, 'Well, Chopper said to me exactly the same thing.'
"He said, 'Buzz. If you see Chopper, then you tell him if I see him in Lygon St on a cafe strip I'll have a coffee with him'.
"And that was it. I reported to Chopper and he said, 'Good. That's it'."
Known widely as "The Buzz", Bosustow was close to Mark and Jason Moran, who were killed in Melbourne's violent underworld feuds.
One of the connections was through the Morans' grandfather, Leo Brooks, a Blues stalwart with whom Bosustow boarded when he came to Melbourne from Perth.
Leo Brooks died about a month before Mark Moran was murdered.
Bosustow yesterday recalled Brooks's funeral, where mourners included 30 or 40 gangsters, including Jason Moran in handcuffs.
"I spoke to Jason a week and a half before he was murdered. He was in Perth to 'sort out something'," Bosustow said.
"That's the sort of guy he was. Business was business to him and pleasure was a different thing."
Asked if he believed Moran had an inkling of what lay ahead for him, Bosustow said: "I think he knew. He had to be very silly if he didn't know.
"I spoke to Mark about four weeks before he was murdered. He was petrified."
Bosustow said he did not attend either brother's funeral.
He said the Underbelly TV series, which cannot be shown in Victoria for legal reasons, was a hit in Western Australia, where he lives.
"It's captured the imagination of everyone here. Everybody is talking about it," he said.
"Jason and Mark are household names. I don't know if that is good. Jason was a very vicious boy."
Bosustow's gangland peacemaker role