I can't believe that, and I actually think it's a good thing - whilst both Hird apologists, at least they're passionate and grass roots board members as opposed to billionaire businessmen.

Deluded Bomber fans in control:

http://www.theage.com.au/afl/afl-news/james-hird-supporters-secure-essendon-board-positions-through-social-media-campaign-20141211-1256f5.html

Good lord! Can you imagine Dee-luded on the MFC board........

Deluded Bomber fans in control:

http://www.theage.com.au/afl/afl-news/james-hird-supporters-secure-essendon-board-positions-through-social-media-campaign-20141211-1256f5.html

another nail in the EFC coffin

good riddance

I can't believe that, and I actually think it's a good thing - whilst both Hird apologists, at least they're passionate and grass roots board members as opposed to billionaire businessmen.

I don't know anything about them, but I'd be worried about 'passionate and grass roots members' being in charge if I was and EFC supporter (and still somehow rational) . What is needed is cool heads and realism not passion.

essendon supporters & rationality are not mutual bedfellows.

I wonder how many times Tanya voted?

I can't believe that, and I actually think it's a good thing - whilst both Hird apologists, at least they're passionate and grass roots board members as opposed to billionaire businessmen.

The Golden Rule- He who has the gold make the rules. Look no further than the chairman

I can't believe that, and I actually think it's a good thing - whilst both Hird apologists, at least they're passionate and grass roots board members as opposed to billionaire businessmen.

Mmmmmm.....it is never a good thing to have unprincipled, and cheating individuals controlling our game. The consequences of Hird coming to power opens up all the other sociopaths and militant litigants to believe the path to power in the AFL is via vexatious behaviour and ignorance of the truth.

Sometimes I really do not think a lot of AFL supporters understand what is at stake here. In my view it is like excusing Putin and thinking that's that is ok. Distorted minds are never a good way to go in any walk of life. Sport is just the latest manifestation of it.

Sometimes I really do not think a lot of AFL supporters understand what is at stake here.

so long as the AFL, ASADA, WADA, someone gets it, we'll be ok. But...

The problem is, we live in the age of the bureaucrats and the spin-doctors, and we so often concede to their "pragmatic" way of thinking things through: "Make it look right"; "compliance and organisational integrity" and all that formulaic geekspeak and nerd-inspired operating procedures and protocols. We put up with businesses dumping us via recorded bullshlt-with-a-smile-in-the-voice into call centres in Manila where they know nothing about our stuff. We just let it happen to us.

We've seen this happening already where Essendon have for two years successfully avoided answering the charges by exploiting our self-hogtying, when they've calmly gone about setting jurisdiction against jurisdiction, sidelined the central outrageous issue (meanwhile their offending players carry on, ever closer to their natural retirements). Similarly, disapproving supporters focus on the pre-determined limits to what penalties can be applied, and make arguments that the (very different scale) rugby case is a precedent here. There seems to be an absolute belief that no tribunal or regulating authority has any right to go outside precedents, despite this being cheating on an unparallelled (and surely, unanticipated) scale - never mind Essendon's subsequent astonishing disregard of the real issue "Drugs in Sport": Essendon think they can get away with this attack on the whole notion of clean sport, openly displaying their mantra "whatever it takes" (!!!), can do anything they like to refuse accountability (ditto, mindbogglingly, Dank - how can we have procedures that let him just say "I won't", or even more extraordinary, "if you have the trial on my terms, maybe I will"?). Why has there not been a single politician raising their voice with an attempt to brush away this mess, demanding the law be changed if this is what it gets us? Where's the boycott of Essendon games by footy fans? Where's the Essendon players saying, you can't do this to us? Where's the young player at the draft saying I won't go to Essendon? Or the free agents who came out and said they wouldn't go there? How come even our own Matty Whelan goes to work for them? It appears, everyone is fine with it, there's just the theatre of processing the thing, but really, business as usual people...

And our discussion does not rise to a crescendo of demand that Essendon be hurled out forever. We are all brainwashed by "process", by PR and media lies, by the all-powerful dollar, and I just can't see anyone demanding that we "lance the boil quickly, the poison has to be spreading!!" No - it's all a fascinating saga, all watching the inventiveness and audacity of the Essendon counter-attacks, SO far ahead of the game!, even admiration of their players. And like me now, speculating on the limits of courage in those (i.e. AFL, ASADA, WADA) whose job it is to stop a rogue player or club from doing what Essendon clearly have done. And wondering if actually drugs really do undermine the game so thoroughly...

This frog is half boiled already, and Essendon are taking their time, adding to the heat slowly, building up to their ultimate playing of the irrelevant card. Fact is, if you can cheat with drugs and be immune for two years, the game's already had it. How many older players will gladly accept that, already?

It's surely FU Essendon - but they have only exploited endemic, society-wide tangle of bureaucratic/administrative/political/money-focused thinking that spells total inability to stamp out dishonesty and abuse. FU the whole trend, it guaranteed an entrepreneurial Essendon. We are sitting ducks.

The World Trade Centre, terrorists everywhere, 1938, the fall of Rome, get complacent and hand over to the weak while the bullies mass - you are a goner. l'histoire se repete...

After 500 pages the saga is nowhere near at an end but we now move on (at least for the time being) to this thread The Essendon 34 on Trial.