Whispering_Jack

I know it's a day late but while the rest of the football world was preoccupied by the goings on at Essendon, the Dees actually did train yesterday as evidenced by these photographs. If anyone was there and can recall what took place , your reports would still be appreciated.

The two highest polling and untainted players deserve to be the fairest and best. Not awarding the Brownlow means giving in to the culture introduced into the game by the machinations of the Danks of this world - something we shouldn't allow to happen. Cotchin and Mitchell deserve to share the medal.

There is only one avenue of appeal and that would be to go to the Swiss Federal Tribunal (and good luck with that one because the CAS decision clearly sets out the reasons for arriving at their conclusion of fact based on the appropriate standard of proof). I find it extremely unlikely that the SFT would consider an appeal let alone overturn yesterday's decision. I don't believe there is a possibility of a hearing in a court of jurisdiction in Australia because, as I understand it, contractually (with WADA and through it, ASADA), the AFL, the clubs and the players have yielded up any rights under sovereign law to the appeal process through CAS. The players are unlikely to receive a stay if there was an appeal to the SFT so by the time they got heard, their time would be done and dusted. ABC on CAS judgement.

They're both well past that.

One of the main features of this saga is the total collapse the public has in its confidence of the truth of what they are told by the football media. We've previously seen commentators with agendas but in this case we were often blatantly lied to by the media who took one side or the other. A reading of the CAS decision should leave people with no doubt as to the involvement of propaganda involved in the affair. Of course, it was Robbo who took the cake throughout and, he was at his very best last night on AFL360 when he suggested it was a split decision by four judges. For the record, it was a unanimous decision on guilt by all three judges with one judge believing no significant fault applied. Kudos however, should go to the Fairfax investigative team of Baker and McKenzie who exposed Dank and his ignorance of the legal status of TB4 very early on in this piece. Once it was published, the writing was on the wall as far as I was concerned.

There was a crucial stage during this saga when decisions were made concerning the legal representation of the players without total separation from that of their football club. The position of the players was that neither we nor the club were cheats and therefore, in my view, a whole range of matters didn't appear to get the consideration they merited. I think it was in or around mid 2014 after Ben McDevitt was appointed, that the players made poor readings of the situation. ASADA's concession that they could not achieve a guilty ruling on AOD9604 (wrong in my view) buoyed the players and hardened their attitudes towards the possibility of making a deal on the charges based on TB4 which, according to some reports, could have seen them banned for the remainder of that season. The saga would have been over by the beginning of 2015, the penalty marginally more harsh than the one that the NRL players took. Had there been total separation between the interests of the club and the players, then I believe the possibility of a deal would have been given a lot more consideration. The AFLPA should have been at the forefront in seeing that its membership was being properly served. I'm not sure that it did that. Marsh's outburst yesterday was totally unbecoming and the frustration shown in his words reflects his organisation's ineptitude in its handling of the matter. He should be one of the first to resign.

Victory for anti-doping

Yeah, but don't forget we couldn't even beat their scrubbers in the NAB Challenge last year.

Very sad news but I must say, I was never into Bowie. The other big news of the day came as a bit of a shock. Rupert Murdoch and Jerry Hall - wow.

And despite the fact that the first proposition is entirely predictable (as probably is the second), congratulations to Elwood 3184 who told us about it first on Saturday afternoon.

The Straight Dope - is that an autobiography?

We knew it was a risk and we accepted it although I can say very clearly that we might well have underestimated the risk involved:- See my comments in http://demonland.com/forums/topic/38382-the-saga-continues-wada-appeals/?page=148 I regard a 12 month enforced holiday from the game a "major" sanction.

Titus:- Essendon Saga: Stay tuned to Twitter for pointless speculation and people pretending to know the result.

A cold night in Helsinki ... a warm morning in Melbourne and time to move on to Here.

If it's Tuesday, today's judgement day ... and there aren't even 34 left playing.

We spent a wonderful day on the island of Tobago - a land where Bob Marley is still revered to this very day, so I get where you're coming from. However, while I'm sure one of our well connected coterie members might be willing to shell out some big bucks to conduct one of those smoky chicken sacrifice rituals to exorcise our demons, it's not really my thing.

Thanks Bob. There's enough there to fill three or four threads here but most of the answers are fairly obvious as touched upon by you. Times change, methods and technology change, peoples' shapes and sizes change. Unfortunately, our club has been pretty much slow on the uptake because like many of the places we visited, we've been run like a banana republic in the past 5 decades. One thing is for certain, there's no such thing as the Norm Smith Curse - our problems have all been man made (or should I say) person made. My optimism now stems mainly from the fact that we appear to have stability at the top these days.

I take that back. On checking the vision, it wasn't a goal. Hogan missed that one but it put us in front by a point (hence my euphoria) but thanks for your contribution - every bit of enthusiasm in an Etihad lowest on record crowd helps. See around the 7 minute mark. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4ndiYaYDNlE&sns=em

Good to hear. I forgot to mention that if you get the chance, you should check out the video of Melbourne's last win. It wasn't all that long ago but if memory serves me well, early in the second quarter, Jesse Hogan is lining up for an important goal against GWS on a forward flank at Etihad and there, clearly in the background, spurring him on in the sparse crowd are none other than Satyr and Mrs Satyr. The scooter is not visible. I'm convinced that goal was the catalyst for our great victory so congrats on your role.

The closer we get to decision day, the less interested I get in the actual result because this is one of those cases where the passing of time makes the judicial outcome virtually meaningless. There's this well worn vision of an exchange between Gerard Whateley and James Hird on AFL360 where the latter claims the AFL Tribunal exonerated his players from using any banned substances and the former correctly states that was not the case, rather that ASADA had failed to convince the Tribunal to the standard of comfortable satisfaction, as to the contents of the substances ingested by the players during the club's year long programme. Never mind of course, that no evidence of anything much could be found at Hird's club - all of it gone, vanished into the ether. So four years after the event and almost three years after details of the programme were made public, we have no justice other than that which has been delayed and denied thanks to political interference, bungled attempts by a conflicted AFL to smooth things over, a hardworking but understaffed and ineffective investigatory regime, a club and its officials stonewalling at almost every step of the way from the ex-CEO, to the ex-coach and the still current club doctor while the apparent chief villain of the piece still refuses to produce the evidence he claims will set the players free. So in the end, Tuesday will bring no surprises and won't change anything from my point of view. Whatever happens, it will act as a liberating influence for the Essendon Football Club and its players because it will bring an end to four lost years that were in themselves, more than adequate punishment. If there's a finding of guilt then there will be further punishment but either way, there are no heroes in all of this, not even the players. Only villains.

Welcome back Satyriconhome. Been round the traps lately?

I think this sums up Roos' thinking at the present moment:- http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=plZRe1kPWZw&sns=em

Sorry Hells, he was on the other side most of the time. When the group did the run through's, the new guys were on the far side doing 200m sprints. He was running quite well. Looks to have dropped most of his puppy fat. Well FWIW, this is what Proper Gander said about him in Bigfooty:- "Looks pretty good - like a big white work-in-progress. He's done something weird with the hair though, No 1 back and sides, throwing his ears into prominence, then the ginger top longer and sprouting in a 360. It's an interesting look that is all his own - he kind of resembles a live volcano that has sparked up on an alpine mountain. Bits and pieces of his play look promising though. He works well and matches up in drills, and his kicking is decent and can travel pretty well. He even snuck in a couple of bounces running for goal which look a million times less terrifying than those included in his highlights package."