heartbeatstrue

Surely, things have been unravelling at an alarming extent on his watch.

I'll respond to your poll once I see what he does with the media's "tanking trial".

Vlad went out of his way today to mention that there aren't any AFL games in question with regards to 'Match fixing'.

That's a nice little piece of evidence to use in court.

The line of questioning on this statement when Vlad is put on the stand will be most entertaing...

Hmmm her tone too me seemed that "if they can prove it" was a bit vindictive.

It's like, the court of CW conducted in The Rage newspaper has adjudicated and found MFC guilty of "tanking" (which should be an indictable offence in CW's biased world where Tige's are blameless even when their coach sits back and refuses to coach because draft picks are on the line).

And if at the end of the day, either the AFL or the legal courts decide there's no charges upon which to find us guilty, she of all wisdom and justice wil smugly declare "but they were guilty, if only those AFL investigators had found the proof" !

No way we can win in the world of CW.

She said: "Dean Bailey WILL be charged. CC WILL be charged, CS will probably be charged, The club WILL be charged..."

Hopefully this is just her arrogant manner, and not a leak from HQ ( absolute disgrace if this is the case)

She's an opinionated old hack. In short, she hasn't a clue. Her sources within the AFL dried up some time ago.

Today's Hun article on tanking (part of season highlights article) seems to be watering down the investigation.

Claims the AFL are backtracking to a position of no case to answer.

There's a definite feeling coming from the press that the AFL wants to whitewash this.

Then how will The Age whitewash Caroline Wilson? The one with blood all over her hands from the hash she did with the knife.

Hearing rumours that the AFL will officially charge the club, Connolly, Bailey & Schwab with tanking. Don't shoot the messanger but my sources are usually pretty good.

As far as I can determine, nobody's been "officially charged" with anything, merely a brief of evidence presented to MFC lawyers. My money's on MFC lawyers having a field day with this one.

The absolute worst outcome from the AFL's perspective is surely for this to get outside the football domain and into the courts. It can only end with the AFL on trial, imo. And Carlton (Kreuzer cup) and others including Richmond will likely be collateral damage.

Melbourne have been offered the chance to respond and have chosen not to at this point. So its not correct to say we haven't been given a right of reply.

If you read it, you'll see that wasn't what I said. It is the leaking of information from the investigation, and consequent media trial and public pronouncements as if fact, that raise natural justice concerns. Legally you cannot conduct an unbiased investigation in this way.

I would presume that privately, MFC are aware of the issues under investigation and of the potential seriousness of the consequences, which is proper. Obviously too, if the investigation leads to any adverse findings, MFC will be given fair opportunity to present their case and answer any adverse decisions.

The media could never provide such commentary on any criminal case before the courts (or criminal investigation before getting to court). It would be contempt.

At school we've all been studying ethics and it has partly covered the Universal declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) and i had a look over it today and noticed a part of it that CW may be out of line with!

Article 11: You should be considered innocent until it can be proved that you're guilty. If you are accused to a crime, you should always have the right to defend yourself. Nobody has the right to condemn you and punish you for something you have not done.

imo she is out of line with this one, the first and last sentence anyway.

Great thinking, yde. Throw the UN book at her, definitely.

The investigation with its widespread press reporting and assumptions of guilt also breaches natural justice, do you agree?

Here's a bit on natural justice from Wikipedia:

The basis for the rule against bias is the need to maintain public confidence in the legal system. Bias can take the form of actual bias, imputed bias or apparent bias. Actual bias is very difficult to prove in practice while imputed bias, once shown, will result in a decision being void without the need for any investigation into the likelihood or suspicion of bias.

The right to a fair hearing requires that individuals should not be penalized by decisions affecting their rights or legitimate expectations unless they have been given prior notice of the case, a fair opportunity to answer it, and the opportunity to present their own case.

Thinking of studying law? Good luck with the exams.

You mean they might beat us by a bigger margin in 2013!

Oh no sue I say

Heartbeatstrue sorry for the smart arse above but like what?

Not sure what anyone could learn from the MFC that would be a danger at this point.

If we were in the top four teams not the bottom three it might be a problem perhaps

That's OK, OD!

Things like list management, player development, salary and financial issues. With free agency, inside knowledge is getting more valuable. I dunno, I'd like to think there's the odd game plan lurking somewhere...

Best wishes and roll on actual footy!

Totally agree.

If the priority pick was still in play, we would've been accused of tanking in 2012. Most of our backs played in the forward line in 2012 and Dunn, previously a forward, became a half back flanker.

Watts, recruited as a key forward, is now a permanent fixture in our backline.

We lost the first 9 games straight.

Many of our senior players were dumped from the leadership group, and the B&F winner from the year before couldn't find the ball. He reckons he was played in the 'wrong role'.

Clearly we tanked. Surely that's what the evidence suggests.

But heh, no one cares - because there's no priority pick anymore.

Exactly!

Good post, important line of argument.

When this is over and we are found to have done nothing wrong, do we get a guarantee from the AFL that it's over?

Or do we have to go through this every time some idiot former player decides to put his two bob's worth in?

We don't have too many as thick as McLean!

Now that these clown investigators have the MFC computers, if there's ever any hint that ANYTHING of a private or confidential nature has been leaked to the unscrupulous gossip-mongerer Wilson, then Melb should take them all to the cleaners.

Imagine the damage if some of our info gets into the hands of other clubs like Richmond for instance.

If anyone needs further reminding of the proposition I put in my previous post, I commend them to view last week's edition on catch up TV of ABC's Offsiders programme (11/11/12) which featured Wilson as a panellist. The others were Roy Masters and Francis Leach and they were as one in their groupthink in condemning Melbourne as being guilty without charge of ... er, alleged "match fixing". It's no longer called "tanking" or "experimentation", no other AFL club was mentioned. Needless to say, no real evidence was presented but it never is when you're putting on a show trial.

Goebells and Joe McCarthy would have been proud.

The bias and bitterness towards certain MFC employees evidenced in this storm of articles in The Age is hardly quality journalism. It smacks of some personal vendetta.

Sadly it's in keeping with the "ethical standards" of journalism in general and the Sports Age in particular (Flanagan excepted).

Here from Crikey in 2009 is pretty much all the substance that there is to this:

http://www.crikey.com.au/2009/08/04/afl-enters-the-tank-end-of-the-season/

In 2007, Richmond coach Terry Wallace told media before the club’s round 22 match against St Kilda that he had “conflicted emotions” about winning the match. (Richmond ultimately lost the game and was able to select champion youngster, Trent Cotchin at that year’s draft). Commenting on that match in June this year, Wallace claimed that “it was a no-win situation for everyone in the coach’s box … we decided the best way to operate was just to let the players go out … I didn’t do anything. I just let the boys play. There weren’t any miracle moves in the last couple of minutes.”

And quoting Garry:

Former Melbourne champion and media personality, Garry Lyon, disagreed with Demetriou, criticizing current situation telling The Age that:

And who is the guilty party? Can hardly expect the Sports Age to rant against Terry Wallace who "didn't do anything" to try and win the game (what hypocrisy by The Age writers!). But Crikey gets it right:

While Demetriou and the AFL celebrate the completely irrelevant defection of Rugby League player, Karmichael Hunt (who many suspect will struggle to perform at AFL level), perhaps they should focus on the game at hand, and rectify a problem that is destroying the integrity of the AFL.

Wilson today:

With investigator Brett Clothier returning to Adelaide in recent days to re-interview former Demons coach Dean Bailey, the inquiry has widened with the league now scrutinising the behaviour of coaches on the Melbourne bench during specific games in 2009.

Fairfax Media understands the AFL has summoned Adam Paulo, who was the club's fitness coach that year ...

What needs investigating is who at the AFL is leaking this stuff to Wilson? Is it Clothier their investigator or somebody close to him? What do they hope to gain? Is their investigation of MFC so weak that they need to resort to trial by media (with Wilson and her apparent hatred of MFC the willing bunny)?

In any case, by leaking the gist of their investigation and having Wilson pass her own biased judgements and even pronounce her own idea of sentences, they have totally stuffed the investigation (from the legal point at least).

So as long as this gets played out in a legal arena and not simply an internal AFL matter, the investigators have for whatever reason (incompetence, likely, considering the lack of natural justice in their methods) stuffed this one.

Her latest article today, she's like a dog with a bone and isn't going to let go.

This is the bit I found most telling:

Clothier, a former tax lawyer, had his team beefed up last year when the internationally recognised police officer Haddad joined the AFL as its first intelligence co-ordinator.

As the league intensified its fight to preserve the game's integrity and protect it from match-fixing and the threat of performance-enhancing drugs, Haddad, who worked in Sierra Leone and Cambodia and has worked as a tactical intelligence operative for the Victoria Police sexual crimes squad, came on board and quickly had his involvement at head office widened.

Suggest someone on this beefed-up investigative team is feeding Wilson the info, in what is the old spooks game of staying on the front foot and building the power base of the new 'crack' team. They won't want to lose face on this, so the ploy is to build their case using CW and the media. The fact they feel the need to use Wilson may indicate the (legal) weaknesses in their investigation, as do their investigative techniques. Long way to go, though... CW got that bit right.

Heard a rumour at the weekend that Caroline's been told by one of her usual reliable sources that the AFL has obtained groundbreaking DNA evidence that Melbourne tanked. She's planning a big scoop article in the Rage for Wednesday, in a bold attempt to displace Obama and the US election off the front page.

vile & vitriolic, oozing hatred for MFC

Good post. I feel the same. I am 60 and have supported them all my life. My wife and kids the same. Never seen them win a flag. Copped [censored] from other clubs fans all my life but never strayed. I started the first supporters club magazine, called Demon's World. I started a supporters group called the Premier's Club. I have been a Director of the club. I have been Team Manager of the club. I brought in a new President, Wayne Reid. I am a Foundation member. I am a sponsor. I enjoy Demonland. I have given all my hope and soul to this club. I don't want anything but success for the club.

I have watched Boards fight each other. I was even part of one big fight. I nearly cried at the merger meeting when I saw the way people treated the late Tiger Ridley, a true Demon great. I have seen the club tear itself apart. This year I watched as Jim passed away, not long after two other Demon greats in Sean Wight and Stewart Spencer. I watched a sponsor stuff us up. I watched the Jurrah situation. I watched as our Coach was falsely called a racist. I watched the team get smashed week after week. I watched the media go to town on us and they still are.

It just seems so unfair. Other teams cheat and win Premierships. We are the only team to win a game that losing would have given us a priority pick and we did it twice. When we did get a pick the kid spent a year lying to us and his dying President before the AFL took him away from us. There is so much more i could go on about.

We seem to spend all of our time worrying about our club. It nearly makes you want to cry and give up. However that is just not acceptable as I have my children and grandchildren who I want to one day enjoy success that I have been denied.

Stop the fighting amongst each other and all get behind the club.

If we lose draft picks I want this club to fight all the way and I mean all the way. We owe it to those who came before and those who will come after. I don't give a rat's arse what we have to do to prevail in this situation, I just want it done. If we have to bring in every other club or destroy Demetriou or hurt the AFL I don't give a sh-t anymore. I have had enough.

Yes we may have been naughty but no different to many other clubs yet we alone once again are copping it. Our brand is being trashed and our future hampered and in fact put at real risk. We have 40 or so players who want to win for us and we need to support them. I don't care how dirty we need to be just do it.

We are seen as a weak club. NO BLOODY MORE. If we lose draft picks, we should hit the Courts, rally at the AFL and show the rest of the clubs that we are here to stay.

Sorry for the rant, I have just had a gutful.

Thanks Redleg for the passion and all that service to the club we love!

Agree 100%.

Caroline Wilson's on a feeding frenzy with this. It's blatant trial by media. If an individual, not a footy club, was being investigated for some suspected crime, no reports or speculation would be allowed under law. If she published such untested conjecture as proven facts, like she has been doing, she would be sued for defamation.

She has slandered MFC in her frenzy to get her articles and name up in lights.

Regarding the slurs on Chris Connolly's reputation in today's papers, he has two options. If true, he should resign. If untrue, he should sue for libel because his reputation is being trashed. Get on the front foot, legally, if there are untruths being published.

If the worst of what Wilson is writing is true, then the AFL should sanction those responsible. Hit the careers and reputations of the individuals involved. That'll wipe it out pretty quickly, not by attacking the football club and supporters and players who even Wilson is not implicating (at this stage).

Caroline Wilson's Tigers are not squeeky clean on this.

But first and foremost, the AFL should be investigated for gross incompetency and hypocrisy in all this. They set the rules and clubs have responded accordingly, the most blatant example in my opinion being Carlton at the end of the 2007 season (Kreuzer Cup). Did they consider "investigating" that one? Will they now?

Here's my list of suspected 'tankers' for the AFL to investigate, and it's just quickly from memory. Fill in all that I've missed:

2004 Richmond

2005 Collingwood (early player surgery, the Pendlebury/Thomas draft)

2004/5? Hawthorn

2006 Kangaroos (early "medical management")

2007 Carltank (Kreuzer Cup)

2008

2009 MFC ("player experimentation")

2010 West Coast

If the AFL have cleared the kruezer cup as they apparently have, then it's all over. Move on.

Spot on, it doesn't get more blatant than that!

In a break from watching the avalanche of Olympic silver, Vlad had this to say from London:

Demetriou said his personal view remained that Melbourne had not tanked in 2009 in order to receive the top draft pick, used on Tom Scully

''My view is that it hasn't existed, that people have experimented … "

http://www.theage.co...0802-23igl.html

And displaying his silky knowledge of MFC in the AFL:

"the game we are talking about, Melbourne and Richmond, it was a kick after the siren and if that kick had gone through, they wouldn't have got their pick."

For the record and Vlad, Melbourne lost that game in Rd 18, 12.10 (82) to 12.14 (86)

It was Jordie MaMahon (love him) who goaled after the siren to give the Tiges the win.- heartbreaking as it was.

(Apologies if this from an interview in London with Eddie McGuire is elsewhere in this thread, it's so big I might have missed it. Presumably he's saying, if Brock's got hard evidence then put up or shut up. I'm guessing he's pretty annoyed with Brock for his own reasons)

In a break from watching the avalanche of Olympic silver, Vlad had this to say from London:

Demetriou said his personal view remained that Melbourne had not tanked in 2009 in order to receive the top draft pick, used on Tom Scully

''My view is that it hasn't existed, that people have experimented … "

http://www.theage.com.au/afl/afl-news/demetriou-vows-to-protect-afl-integrity-20120802-23igl.html

And displaying his silky knowledge of MFC in the AFL:

"the game we are talking about, Melbourne and Richmond, it was a kick after the siren and if that kick had gone through, they wouldn't have got their pick."

For the record and Vlad, Melbourne lost that game in Rd 18, 12.10 (82) to 12.14 (86)

It was Jordie MaMahon (love him) who goaled after the siren to give the Tiges the win.- heartbreaking as it was.

Here's my list of suspected 'tankers' for the AFL to investigate, and it's just quickly from memory. Fill in all that I've missed:

2004 Richmond

2005 Collingwood (early player surgery, the Pendlebury/Thomas draft)

2004/5? Hawthorn

2006 Kangaroos (early medical management)

2007 Carktank (Kreuzer Cup)

2008

2009 MFC (player experimentation)

2010 West Coast

Finally, the AFL should be investigated for gross incompetency and hypocrisy in all this.

This from the AFL's own website:

http://www.afl.com.au/news/newsarticle/tabid/208/newsid/143133/default.aspx

Dean Bailey coached the Demons to the wooden spoon in 2008 and 2009, securing the first draft picks in both seasons as well as the second pick in 2009.

The Demons used those picks to draft Jack Watts, Tom Scully and Jack Trengove. Scully joined Greater Western Sydney on a multi-million dollar deal in late 2011.

Bailey said last year at his farewell press conference: "I had no hesitation at all in the first two years (2008-09) in ensuring the club was well-placed for draft picks. I was asked to do the best thing by the Melbourne Football Club and I did it. I put players in different positions," Bailey said.

An AFL investigation which followed Bailey's bombshell found the Demons had no case to answer over tanking allegations.

There endeth the story. Or so it should have, until Brock opens his big mouth. in front of silly journo's.

The hypocrisy in all this is astonishing.

Having personally endured the Kreuzer Cup in 2007 (Rd 22) there's no doubt that pathetic game was blatant tanking by Carlton.

It is the AFL who created the situation with their rules on draft picks, and they must investigate and sanction Carltank in exactly the same way as they might do for MFC. Then as others have pointed out, the result of playing players out of position or resting top players in a dead rubber is not much different.

The game against Richmond in Rd 18, 2009 - when the final siren went, we were ahead. So but for Jordie McMahon (love him), we were even failures at tanking (can you tank and still win? Presumably the charge must be altered to "attempting" to tank!)

Brock McLean hasn't learned how to keep his big mouth shut. Bailey has already admitted to deliberately playing players out of position for future prospects of the MFC (back on 3 Aug 2011) and this was investigated by the AFL who found nothing to warrant further action. McLean hasn't added anything new, but it's field day for certain journalists who love sticking the boots in Melb.

And if we're looking for scapegoats, we haven't exatly been brilliantly coached this year. It's the administration of the club that has got us where we are now and shows little sign of getting us out anytime soon.

What happened to Magner? Injured? Presumably subbed out - 13 DT points.

McLardy moved to placate growing unrest among members with a letter to the Demons faithful assuring them the club was heading in the right direction.

http://www.theage.com.au/afl/afl-news/deecision-on-the-run-20120521-1z1di.html

(Reassuring to know we're heading in "the right direction" according to McLardy)

Neeld, Sept 2011:

''I simply want to coach the team that is the hardest to play against in the AFL. That means all over the ground, we're going to be the hardest to play against. That's what our aim is, as simple as that."

Schwarz:

''The last time I saw something like that was down at Geelong last year [when the Demons lost by 186 points]. Players didn't have a dip and, again on Saturday, we saw the same thing where players decided not to go the contest.''

http://www.theage.com.au/afl/afl-news/cut-demons-pay-says-former-great-20120521-1z1dh.html

Kennelly:

''I just can't get away from the Melbourne perspective that there was absolutely no fight whatsoever. There was no gut, no drive, no passion in your performance.

''As a footballer, you want to get respect from the AFL community. Melbourne is losing so much respect with what's happening.''

http://www.theage.com.au/afl/afl-news/demons-lack-pride-says-kennelly-20120520-1yz2l.html