Mazer Rackham

And sure enough, on SEN ... this shows what amazing integrity he has. What a guy. If only he'd showed such amazing integrity when Dank was handing out his elephant juice, this whole thing might never have occurred. Well done, noble upstanding Jobe! (Not.)

They tried that at first. A beautiful Han dynasty porcelain horse's head. Gil was delighted. After that they realised they may have erred. So they've stepped it up a notch. Next will be threatening to drop Gil from the Town & Country polo team.

Look, Gil's under enormous pressure. You know his brother was trampled by a horse? That horse is owned by an Essendon coterie group. It was a warning. Gil knows he could be next, unless ...

In letting it get this far, the AFL have already shown the strength of their moral fibre. One thing that might explain his failure to do so could be that someone at AFL headquarters has told him they'll swing things so he can keep it. However that in turn exposes Jobe's moral fibre ... he shouldn't need to be told by anyone what he should do. There is one course of action. I have heard that athletes competing in Olympic sports here in Oz are stupefied by the entire EFC saga and the non-actions of the AFL. A 16 year old gymnastic had a gold medal stripped for taking two cold tablets. But Jobe can keep his Charlie? The AFL will rightly be a laughing stock.

I reckon Jobe was given a nod and a wink by the AFL early on in the saga that the Charlie was not at risk. That they'd pull strings, get the players off, voila, Charlie is a non issue. Now, the delay is all about how they reconcile that with the players going down and all avenues of appeal exhausted. Imagine if a p!ssed off Jobe went public...

"Before I answer, let me review the Dogs TV ratings and gate revenues."

They are shameless. Would they even notice? Now if a sponsor said they're disgusted and are pulling their dollars .........

It's well known that Cousins was not squeaky clean. But as you imply, there really is no comparison. Cousins was into "recreational" drugs, and although they can be performance enhancing, that's not why he took them. (Or so it appears from this distance.) Also he was in it for himself, not for any footy related reason. And, he was cunning enough to time his use so that the AFL testing regime, such as it was, never caught him. He's no angel, and probably lucky. Compare that to the coach-instituted team-wide doping programme at EFC, unprecedented and breath taking in its audacity.

Gil likes a challenge. "Everyone said he couldn't keep it! That the rules didn't allow it. That there was no way the comp could permit it. Well, who's laughing now? (Apart from me and Jobe, that is.)"

The number one rule of the AFL is that there are no rules. They do what they damn well feel like doing.

This sports lawyer is so invested in splitting hairs and throwing up clouds of legal obfuscation that he seems to have lost sight of his own assertion: "surely it's a fait accompli that Watson's Brownlow Medal, earned in the Bombers annus horribilis, will be stripped". I have more to say but am too disgusted at the thought that the AFL will adopt this character's line of thinking.

It means, "man who disgraced himself by the bad influence of ignoble people but who was able to redeem himself by leaving them and surrounding himself with wise and upstanding people instead".

Well Leigh Montanya is Mon-tag-na. And Yay-ger O'Meara pronounces it Jay-ger. We'll just have to ask Yibbity Yibbida how to say his name.

You know ... coz Lewis said Hogan signing was a big factor ... take it down a notch in class for Hibberd/Pedo ... oh never mind.

That's why he has managed to find a home in footy media.

At least let us finish our cigarettes.

No necessarily. We might have decided to knock this deal over to leave time for doing others. Rather than still having horns locked with EFC at 11:45 tomorrow. Spending pick 29 on Hibberd is hardly a disaster. "Money" well spent in fact.

It's said that this year's draft is a bit thin, so if we're not in the first round, it's not essential to hold on to this year's picks. Better to hold on to next year's picks.

What do they care? They are beyond shame.

ASADA established that Charter ordered TB4, that the Chinese lab shipped stuff supposed to be TB4, that the Chinese believed it was in fact TB4, that Charter received the shipment thinking it was TB4, that the chemist mixed it up according to how you would prepare TB4, that Dank injected it in concordance with a regime of TB4. And there were these "consent forms" saying "I hereby give permission to be injected with thymosin". And the players did indeed receive injections. Hardly a botched prosecution. The AFL tribunal said, what if it WASN'T TB4!?!? What if it was ...... SOMETHING ELSE and the vials just SAID TB4!? In effect, what if it was really icing sugar and engine coolant? The only way to know would be to go back in time and have a lab analyse the exact batch of stuff sent from China. That's not comfortable satisfaction. That's not even reasonable doubt. That's looking for absolute proof. The tribunal said, if we can't know what was in that shipment, then there's no point going further. Case dismissed! That's why the tribunal decision was scorned. Even before the tribunal convened, there were warning signs. The members were hand picked by the AFL presumably because of a propensity for a certain way of thinking. Enter Jones, the chairman and esteemed beak who some years before managed to find Barry Hall not guilty of striking so he could play in a grand final.

This decision should be easy and should have been made months ago. What hold has Jobby got on Gil? Why is Gil dithering? What private commitment has Gil made to Jobby that requires time for Gil to work his deal making magic and thereby extract himself from embarrassment? It seems that Gil is trying to avoid a situation where Jobby runs to Robbo saying "Gil promised me I could keep it."

I had thought in my innocence that a CEO of an organisation is the one empowered to make decisions, on a daily basis. If his decisions go against the philosophy of the business then the board can step in. Or if he thinks a pending decision conflicts with said philosophy then he can kick it upstairs to the board. But when a CEO makes public statements that his business is committed to clean sport and wishes to protect clean players, then this particular decision is easy. If a CEO refuses to make decisions then one presumes the board is duty bound to step in and replace him.

It was Jobe who initiated the drive for "consent forms" for the players. Not the action of a man who thought it was all completely above board and comprising harmless supplements. It shows he realised there was potentially something wrong, that the players needed to be protected against. And before the drug years of 11/12 and his Brownlow, the thing Jobe was best known for was his aborted sit-down protest against umpires. I know he was a lot younger then but it showed appalling judgement.

This applies to the entire AFL comp.