Daniel Gorringe is an Australian media personality and former professional Australian rules footballer who played for the and. After being drafted from the Norwood Football Club, he made his Australian Football League debut for Gold Coast in 2011 and played 22 games in his five seasons with the Suns, before being delisted and subsequently signed by Carlton, where he played four games in 2016. Gorringe appeared in Channel 7's Big Brother Australia 2020 reboot where he made the final top 3 in the competition.
Gorringe made his AFL debut against the Western Bulldogs at Etihad Stadium in round 3, 2011 where he managed a goal and took a spectacular mark that was not awarded by the umpires. Two weeks later he played in Gold Coast's historic first ever AFL win by three points against Port Adelaide at AAMI Stadium. He faced numerous injuries to his ankle and hamstring in 2011 and only managed to play seven games in his first AFL season. His injury problems continued in 2012 when he injured his achilles, which took him out for almost the whole season. In 2013 he managed to play nine AFL games for Gold Coast as a useful ruckman and key forward which earned him a two-year contract extension to the end of 2015. In 2014 Gorringe suffered another achilles injury which kept him on the sidelines for most of the season. Late in 2014 he recovered to play three AFL games, but a knee injury ended his season prematurely. At the conclusion of the 2014 season Gorringe attempted to secure a trade to, but when ruckman Patrick Ryder became available to Port Adelaide he was left to finish out his contract at Gold Coast. Gorringe later revealed his decision to give everyone at the Suns "an absolute serve on the way out" when it appeared he had secured a trade to Port Adelaide and had to apologise to the staff at the club when the trade fell through and he returned for their 2015 season. Injuries continued to wreak havoc on his career in 2015 and poor form meant he was only able to play two AFL games. Towards the end of the season his form for Gold Coast's reserves team started to improve and he explored his options to move to another club. He was delisted by the Gold Coast in October 2015 and in November, he was recruited by as a delisted free agent.
Carlton (2016–2017)
Gorringe got his first opportunity to play an AFL game for when Carlton's primary ruckman Matthew Kreuzer was injured. He played his first game for Carlton against, matching up against one of the AFL's best ruckmen in Todd Goldstein. He was dominated by Goldstein throughout the match with the hitout discrepancy totalling 38 and Carlton losing the affair by 67 points. He played three more AFL games before a hip injury ended his season. He faced yet another setback in the 2017 pre-season when he re-injured his achilles. At the conclusion of the 2017 season, Gorringe decided to retire from football, having played just 26 games across seven seasons as an AFL player.
In late July 2019, Gorringe began posting a series of humorous memories of his footballing career to social media, gaining a large audience among football fans. The stories included not kicking an open goal as he was instructed not to kick, being verbally sacked in the opening rounds of his final season with Gold Coast and agreeing to no exit meeting and being allowed to "just continue drinking beers", finding out he had been dropped by the AFL app on multiple occasions, retiring before being delisted because "retirement looks better next to my name in the papers and on the internet", abusing Gold Coast staff after believing he was being traded only for no such trade to take place, and faking a hamstring injury to avoid embarrassment after gastro caused him to defecate during a game. The Twitter account gained Gorringe the most attention arguably of his career, with his tweets shared on multiple media outlets, and Gorringe being interviewed on Triple M about his stories. Gorringe received a writing role with Sportsbet after his new found fame.
