sue

Well the weak excuse offered is that they thought if they told ASADA this would be giving away competitive advantage because ASADA would then blab the secret formula to other clubs. I guess that is just possible (ie. .00001%)

What a load of tripe. Would he accept these excuses for the Russian water polo team. They have no team spirit. No true Aussie team spirit I guess. And as for the players naively believing it was legal, why did they not report these legal injections?

Leaving aside obvious speculations, has anyone actually heard how serious the injury is?

Is there an explanation as to why he would lie to say it was frisbee playing rather than cricket that injured him? Is he not allowed to play cricket? Surely not since there would be 21 witnesses that he did.

Great to have someone who can forecast injuries. Let's see your list for the coming year so we can plan around it.

I presume we can now add playing with your dog to basketball as a no go area for AFL players.

Can anyone who trawls non-EFC and Demons forums comment on how the saga is viewed by those supporters?

Unfortunately for me I don't like watching any other sport than AFL. Otherwise I'd be off.

Just flabbergasted that the players don't see that getting off on a technicality without overturning the evidence is great for staying out of jail but does nothing for your reputation.

Banning gambling it is one thing. Actively promoting it is another.

You don't think it makes sense when the saga moves into a new stage to start a new chapter? I do. I don't like books without chapters - they get hard to read. I look forward to the final thread which will include an index, glossary and footnotes.

I'm staggered. Just how does getting the player off on a technicality clear their reputations? Even more so when the technicality is that new evidence that helped prove their guilt should not have been admitted. As for the EFC insurers paying for this, I guess they assume there is a small chance they will get off. So it is worth a bet of $500K on it. That may just save them an enormous payout that dwarfs the $500K gamble. I expect they are simultaneously hiring lawyers to find an angle whereby they can dodge paying EFC if they lose.

It would be interesting for the AFL to tell us how many teams were 'stridently opposed' or indifferent to what they did for the cheats?

I love the line that the players took nothing illegal and if they did then they were duped by Dank. The former has been decided against them by CAS. The latter calls for only one response - sue Dank.

It was not clearly stated but I presume Eades' remarks don't apply to Essendon, only the other 4 clubs?

All true and your summary was good. I was just making the point that even if someone had not followed all the details, they will think the players guilty if they are just told that the players hid from ASADA injections they supposedly thought legal.

I reckon you could delete the rest of the list and just rely on that one point.

I wonder how Essendon could implement this now that the drug game has been caught out: http://www.gizmodo.com.au/2016/02/how-pro-cyclists-cheat-using-motorized-bikes/

I know that Dawes' marking skills are often <indescribable> but I recently watched a few matches (which we won, I'm not a masochist) and he took some really good critical marks. Let's not overdo the mockery.

Absolutely OD. If the AFL was a company, if the shareholders hadn't sacked the lot of them well before this, they certainly would now.

If we needed any further evidence that the AFL is incompetent as well as corrupt, this is it. Any company of the AFL's size which did not work out its responses to every possible CAS outcome, however thought to be unlikely, is beyond incompetent. They should all be sacked.

I don't know whether to laugh or laugh

Well said WJ. As usual the AFL makes it up on the run. Any decently managed company of the AFL's size would have made plans and consulted with the clubs to cover all possible outcomes of the CAS, including that the players might be banned for a considerable time, however unlikely they thought that was in their private cuckoo-land.

It does say this: Also interesting:

I haven't followed the details, but the NRL seems a bit tougher than the Australian Football Loophole (AFL) - almost 3 years for attempting to use.... http://www.abc.net.au/news/2016-01-28/martin-kennedy-receives-long-nrl-ban-for-doping-offences/7121924