sue

I don't see why they are tedious - it is a significant issue and one hopefully where we have dodged any bad outcome. I'm also glad we have him as things stand.

BB as an Essendon hater myself, I'm happy to say that if Goodwin was involved with drugging his team, then I will happily see him go regardless of the effect on our club. I expect most of the anti-Hird/EFC people you attempt to criticise have the same view, but it irks you that they don't call for Goodwin's head on a daily basis. And why should they - the issues that they comment on are the events as they (endlessly) unfold - all to deal with legal actions etc involving people whose name is not Goodwin. Unlike you, I think EFC were as guilty as hell and compounded that by their subsequent actions bringing disgrace on our game. They should have put their hands up like the rugby club did and this would all have been over years ago. No Essendon-lovers can ever again shake their head and tut-tut when the Russian water polo team or the Chinese hockey team etc is called out for drug cheating.

I too don't want to prolong this, but do you consider Chinese/Russian altheletes etc when found to have been taking drugs to be 'convicted'? But only if the drugs have been found in their body perhaps? And not if there is a strong chain/rope of evidence that they did? There is always doubt, even if their urine is full of drugs. Perhaps the detection chemistry was wrong, a mix-up in the lab etc.

But do you have a problem with the word 'convicted' as in 'convicted substance abusers'.

Sorry LDvC, when a murderer is found guilty of breaking the law beyond reasonable doubt he is convicted. In this case the level required to be found to have been breaking the law was 'comfortably satisfied'. So they are convicted of the offence. I won't quibble whether a peptide is a drug or not - the point is that they were found guilty of <insert drug/peptide>. ie. convicted drug/peptide takers.

It does say this: Also interesting:

I'm not assuming it either. Just on my relentless crusade to turn up improbable excuses for the players.

I've tried and failed to think up plausible excuses for the players not reporting the injections. Here's a new attempt (boy am I leaning over backwards for these cheats): I wonder if they didn't report it to ASADA partly (if not wholly) simply because of embarrassment caused by not knowing what they were being injected with. What would you do if faced with a form which stated "please list any supplements you have had in the last x months' and you had no idea what they were?

I agree with much of what you wrote, but not with the sentence above. It was more than not asking questions. Why did they not mention the perfectly 'legal' injections when ASADA made its regular inquiries if they had nothing to hide? There is no innocent answer to that as several posters have demonstrated,

If by completely cold you mean doing all the usual pre-season training, then yes. And do you really think that any serious player will not spend between now and Sept 2016 doing private training. I'm sure that could be programmed without breaking any WADA rules if sensibly and carefully organised. Well I would be sure except the brain-dead responses from the AFLPA people makes me wonder if there is anyone with the necessary intelligence to organise it. Of course it is a long time and some of the 34 still currently intending to play will fall through the cracks for various reasons.

I'd guess that a number of banned players will get together to train and even hire a few support staff (with money coming from unidentifiable sources). I'm sure that will happen for the blokes at EFC and maybe they'll welcome an old mate Melksam to join them. Those at Port may have to form a smaller group.

On the contrary, if a player is on another team he risks meeting Viney maybe twice a year. Watts has to face the prospect of being tackled at training several times a week.

Before the draft many posters were saying the club must have had a player in mind when manoeuvering to get the #3. Has the club said that CO was part of the plan, or did we just #3 regardless?

I've now watched most of the Vic metro v country and I still didn't see that Parish was much good. Didn't seem to get into the game. If we do pick him someone please tell me that that match was unusual.

I've no idea if Parish is the bee's knees and am happy to assume he is from the enthusiasm displayed here. But after viewing some of that match I'm convinced of one thing - take no notice of highlight reels. I watched most of the last quarter and got the impression Parish was nothing special. While he got the ball a bit, almost every time he got the ball he kicked it forward wildly and some of his handpasses were B-grade. Did I miss something? Fortunately the recruiters, and I presume even posters here, do more than look at the odd quarter.

Ture, sensible postings were difficult to find amongs the volume of complaints that the club wasn't being tough enough. But they were there - they just didn't use jargon labels (copyrighted by Harvard) to attach to the concepts.

O good grief. Just the pedantry I was referring to. BTW, it you buy 100 tickets in a lottery, is it not a lottery to you because your odds are better than the bloke who has only bought one ticket.

Can't even say that. After all, we all know the draft is a lottery (even if we pedantically argue about the obvious point that the probabilities in the lottery are weighted in favour of early picks.)

Good to see they teach the bleeding obvious at Harvard. Presumably they teach some other stuff to justify the large fees.

My point was that EFC blabbed it, not MFC. My reference to scraps was not to that statement which as you say was categoric. It was to the other speculative stuff we've been drowned in for the last 2 weeks.

And its our fault he said that? Still building castles on scraps of information and the mis-information that is dribbled out by partiesas it suits their cause.

Still amazed how many posters are privy to so much inside information to form these black and white judgements.

Amusing to reflect on how much positivity is expressed when we nominate 18 year-old "Johnny Hasn't-Played-an-AFL-game" as an early pick in the lottery of the draft, yet how much negativity is being expressed about this bloke. Let's wait and see.

never saw a game more in need of clash jumpers

If we played about 500 games a year these stats, in the absence of other information, might really mean something rather than just provide entertaining conjectures.